






Chap.. ... Copyright No. 

SheltT&lW 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Mi 








*> *?v£r\ 



TETHERED TRUANTS; 



BEING 



Essays, Sketches and Poems 



BY 



W. C. COOPER, M. D. 



MS- - C 



cincinnati, ohio: 

Sullivan PrintingWorks, 

1897. 



r 



COPYRIGHTED 
BY W. C. COOPER, M. D. 



5U 



Lovingly Dedicated 



TO 



My Wife and My Daughter. 



INDEX. 

PAGE 

A Johnstown Episode, 48 

Ambition's Dream, . . 16 

An Episode, . . • • ... 49 

A Reticent Reformer, ... . . 81 

As Johnny Tells it, 23 

Aesthetics op Suicide, . . .24 

A Simple Tale and True, 76 

As. Three-year-old Mabel Tells it, 172 

A Picture in Reminiscence, ... 165 

As to Walking, 70 

A Tomb, 11 

Atheism, 104 

Bill and Serafener, 108 

Bill Warnick, 71 

ClNCINNATAIRE, 143 

Cleyes, 169 

Compound Case Complexly Treated, 196 

Consolation, ... . . 198 

De Ignernce of Some Folks, 23 

Dialect Poetry, . . 135 

Do Right and Trust in God, 183 

E.\ fa xt Terrible, . 186 

Episode in a Homely Man's Life, ... 64 

Etidorhpa, 153 

Finite ys. Infinite Logic, 119 

Fo'th-July, . ..... 80 

Frenetic Fangles, . . 68 

God's Will be Done, 148 

Had Her Fortin' Told, . • . ... 140 

How it Was, 18 

How Strangely Things Happen, 182 

Idealism and the Nature of Mind, 159 

Intension, .... ... 128 

Irene, . . 29 

"Jimsy," 92 

Jingo, 118 

Johnny's Views About Goats, 9 

Jonas Hawk, 12 

Latent Faculties of the Mind, 144 

Laughing Anna Lide, 10 

Letter from a " Subject," ... 74 

Literary Merit and Short Stories, 30 

Little Goldin' Hair, 127 



INDEX. 



Marvels of the Unseen, • 
Me'n Hank an' the Gyrls, 
Mental Gymnastics, . . . 
My First Love, ... 
My Grandmother's Yard, 

Ole Bob Griggs, . . . 

Our Edie, 

Our Evangel, 

Our Happy Family, ... 



Paint Me a Picture in Music, 
Preterist Critics, 

Rejuvenation, ... 
Religion and Medicine, 



Saved, • • 

Scientific Lessons, 

SETn Smith, ... 

Should is Shall, ... 

Sparking, 

Stellaline, . . 

Subjectivity, 

Take Hope Brother, 

The Ascent of Life, 

The Bachelor's Quandary, 

The Bad Boy, . . 

The Devil, . . . . .... 

The Dream City, .... 

The Double Fight, 

The Jumpin' Race, 

The Little Tin Soldier, 

The Locomotive, . 

The Moon, . . . . 

The Picnic, 

The Poppy's Spell, ... 

The Rising Tragedian's Last Appearance, 

The Scheming Microbe, 

The Spirit of Beauty, ....... 

The Spring, 

The Tramp's Grievance, . . 

This and That, . . . . 

Times of Yur, ... 
To Bassett, . . ... .... 

To James Whitcomb Riley, 

To Laurie, ... 



Vernal Muse-ings, . . 

Wail of the Agnostic, 
Walt Whitman, . . 
What is Poetry, . . . 
Who May Pray, 
Wisdom, . . 

Wise Johnny, . . 



. • 110 

■ ■ 100 

173 

. 170 

17 

• 139 
164 

56 

. . 189 

55 
. . 2 

. . 57 

• 177 

120 
. . 149 

114 
. . 134 

194 
1 

190 

. . 195 
42 

132 

175 
155-156 
. . 40 
. . 28 
. . 133 
. . 63 

142 

62 

. . 157 

69 

. 130 

. . 50 

. . 148 

. . 90 

56 

. . 41 

91 

. . 87 

193 



73 

107 
19 
51 

192 
39 
22 



Written in Emma's Album, 185 



Preface. 



BUT for a specific and relentless pressure, it is 
certain that my scraps would never have 
segregated into bookhood. Explicitly stated, 
the work represents a concession to the loving 
unreason of my wife and daughter, its existence 
being directly accounted for by their ability and zeal 
as special pleaders. This, notwithstanding the 
kindly encouragements of many intimate and 
stranger friends, to all of whom I am deeply indebted. 

In general, I beg the reader to accept me for what 
I am, and the book for what it is. If it happen that 
some of my conceits, doctrines and utterances are in 
heretical relation to his own, let him charitably 
remember that my disagreement with him is pre- 
cisely measured by his difference with me — neither 
of us is in fault. It is better that each forgive the 
other his benightedness, looking to the eternal veri- 
ties for a final adjustment of the matter. The book 
was not written for a class, but will be least objected 
to by independent thinkers. 

If the orthodox will overlook a little heterodoxy; 
if the staid will condone a little free-gatedness, and 
if all will forgive the poetry, then everything will be 
satisfactory, and the whole lot of us shall be happy. 

w. c. c. 

Cleves, O., February 15, 1897. 



Explanation 



IF I HAVE kept my subscribers and intended patrons waiting 
a long time, the reason for so doing has been a sufficient 
one. Droves of angular circumstances, supplemented with 
flocks of horned exigencies, have beset me with a devilish 
pertinacity which, it seems to me, was worthy a better cause. 
But, half accepting it that Fate knows what she is about, I have 
made a virtue of necessity, and with a metallic smile, shaken 
hands with her uncanny heralds as they came along. 

In this connection I want to thank all who have extended a 
helping hand. My gratitude goes out particularly to Walter S. 
Hurt, aforetime editor of The New Bohemian, for his valuable 
editorial assistance. This gentleman is one of the most bril- 
liant prose writers, and one of the truest poets I ever knew. 
Add to these equipments an inexhaustible mine of good-fellow- 
ship, and you have the character of the man whose encourage- 
ments and practical helpings have been invaluable to me. It 
is a matter of profound regret to me that he could not get the 
time to thoroughly edit my manuscript. The fact is, he got to 
devote only one short day to it. I am personally responsible, 
therefore, for the many literary and other faults of the book. 
If my ambition had been greater, I might have managed to 
make my book better, but if all my friends and past readers get 
each a copy of it, and will be heroic enough to be satisfied with 
it as it is, then my dizziest dream will be realized. 

W. 0. c. 



TETHERED TRUANTS, 



STELLALINE. 



Her beauty is something to dream of and die — 
The cast of Camilla's, constraintive and clean, 

But intenser and still more suggestively high : 

'Tis only evolved in the ultramost sky — 
The beauty of my Stellaline. 

She was one with the angels that dwell 'mid the stars, 

And they named her, this seraph, for Astraland's queen, 
And they ravelled out ribbons from rainbow bars, 
And jewels they caught from theflamings of Mars, 
These angels, to deck Stellaline. 

Of gossamered sunset, and spangled with glints 

From the scintillate soul of divine hippocrene, 
Her robe, they festooned with hyperion hints 
Of heaven's own jasper and pearl, in their tints— 
For my soul's sunlight, Stellaline. 

Through her mystic, miraculous, marvelous hair, 

With its gold, and its glitter, and shimmer and sheen, 
They sprinkled the sparkle of stars twinkling there, 
And a bouquet of flushes, and flashes and flare, 
They pinned on my own Stellaline. 

And out in a realm remote from the real 

Of time, and its paltry transpirings terrene, 
They w T ove for her brow, in this border ideal, 
A crown out of blushes, and kisses, and feal — 
All this for my heart's Stellaline. 

Through vistas lethean, o'er furthermost pastness, 

In oversoul transport, in trances serene, 
I floated through measureless, visionful vastness 
To her, and absorbed, to its ultimate lastness, 

The presence of sweet Stellaline. 



2 Tethered Truants. 

PRETERIST CRITICS. 

You will find them in each social stratum. The 
hoy who is inordinately " stuck on himself," objects 
to the local champion at marbles as being "thes 
middlin", " at's all." The other boys are to infer that 
lie has been accustomed to seeing games played by 
the most brilliant professionals, and they — his play- 
mates — are to be struck with wonder and reverence. 
They are to realize their own insignificance, and to 
recognize his superiority. 

When this boy becomes a young man, and you go 
to the circus with him, he will tell you, after the 
performance is over, that it was "no good at all — it 
was poor entertainment for people who have seen 
circuses." You are to he awed and you are to envy 
him. It makes no difference how meritorious a 
performance may have been, this self-coddler will 
always express himself in the same strain. He feeds 
on the real and imagined fruits of this meretricious 
autoglorification 

When he gets into letters, he infallibly becomes a 
critic — one of that breed who can see but little merit 
in present-day writers. You must know, first of all, 
he is a classicist, and that his mighty spirit has been 
accustomed to browse in the bowers of ultimate 
literary upness and outness. It must be injected 
into you that his regular tipple has been hippocrene 
with Pierian-Spring water as a " pusher." He has 
romped with Pan over Parnassus and Helicon, and 
has done the bare-back act on Pegasus through 



Tethered Truants. 3 

Tempe Yale. How should he be expected to relish 
the rhythmic drivel of now? We are to stand in awe 
of him and when he frowns upon modern poets, 
they are to wither, and fall away into demnition 
bow-wowdom. 

The writers of every period, particularly the poets, 
have been thus condemned by their classic critics. 
Poor old Horace, Homer and Virgil, although they 
did nearly as well as many of our present-day men 
of letters, weren't appreciated by the world till ages 
after they were dead. This is true, in only a less 
degree, of writers of the more modern past. It is 
safe to say every considerable poet must wait till a 
large oak tree lias grown on the site of his grave, 
before he can fully realize on his poetry. 

To a person who has more strong common sense 
than conventional finish, this state of affairs is 
inexplicable. It is the more so, because, owing to 
his rigorous and fair method of thought, he under- 
stands that that quality of enchantment which 
inheres in far-awayness is fictitious. He will reason 
thus: "If all my other senses are immediately 
trustworthy, why not my aesthetic sense ? Other 
things being equal, why am I more capable of passing 
upon the merits of Wordsworth's poems than was 
my antetype of his day ? I know that age improves 
whiskey and fiddles. Can this be true of poetry, so 
that doggerel of the sixteenth century becomes 
excellent poetry in the nineteenth century? " 

Our friend does not seem to know that we have 
two classes of critics — the true critics who are 



4 Tethered Truants, 

humble and few, and the professional critics, who are 
popular and many. The true critic is, himself, a 
poet, whether a writer or not. He knows poetry the 
moment he sees it, hut his influence is small hecause 
there are so few of him. 

The popular literary critic cannot do it himself, 
hut he knows how it ought to be done ! It is far 
within the bounds of justice to say that not one critic 
or editor in a hundred is capable of discriminating 
between true poetry and high-grade doggerel. The 
fact is, not one person in ten thousand is highly 
endowed poetically. Why should it happen then, 
that more than one out of many hundreds of our 
editors and critics, is a judge of poetry? They have 
dutifully read the standard poets, and been forced to 
practice scansion, paraphrasis, etc., at their academies, 
but this has not changed their poetic lack any more 
than it has changed the color of their eyes. Yet 
these are they who create literary orthodoxy. Out of 
a chaos of heavy epicoid, and sonnetic scholasticism 
they have evolved their ideas of poetry, and verse 
which does not square with these is squelched. This 
acquired taste is the natural adjunct of preterisrn, 
and the latter is the offspring of the most fee ul ant 
quality of autolatry there is. It is the high office of 
the usual professional critic to damn into present 
oblivion poetry, which, under stress of intrinsic merit, 
will ultimately blossom into immorality. 

Xow, let this be denounced as the pasquinade of a 
soured poetaster or whatnot, I want to submit a 
couple of propositions which, while they will be 



Tethered Truants. 5 

condemned by the regulation critic, will, I am certain 
meet the hearty approval of all true poets. First: 
While it is technically convenient to call an epic a 
poem, it is not poetry. Second: The real poet does 
not write epics, and writes sonnets only as a conces- 
sion to the putative taste of the unpoetic literary. 
This is flagrantly heretical, for epics and sonnets are 
the aristocrats of orthodox letters. 

Poe knew exactly what he was talking about when 
he said : " I hold that a long poem does not exist. I 
maintain that the phrase, '"a long poem,' is simply a 
Hat contradiction in terms," etc. It is a fundamental 
principle in nature that all essences and highly 
concentrated things are produced sparingly, and are 
satisfactory to the consumer only in small amounts. 
For an irresistible natural reason, we eat honey in 
small quantities. Poetry is to the mind, what honey 
is to the body. Nature is self-consistent throughout. 
A poem is a literary erethism — it is the product of a 
soul on lire. 

Language becomes poetic when it touches the 
aesthetic sense. This, and this only establishes the 
line of demarcation between prose and poetry. The 
thought back of the poem, and each idea behind 
bursts of phraseological beauty and sAveetness through 
the poem, and each interlineal and interverbal 
meaning within the poem — these are common to prose 
and poetry. Every rhetorical embellishment, such as 
allegory, metaphor, simile, etc., is common to 
prose and poetry. The poet is allowed peculiar 
licenses, but since the use of them about 



6 Tethered Truants. 

always detracts from the merit of poetry, the 
concession may be said to mark a weak link in the 
chain of belle-lettres. Rhyme and rhythm are effective 
poetic accessories by virtue of their melodic quality, 
though it is remarkable that much that is accurately 
rhymed and metred is not poetry, vide Cowper, Pope, 
Scott, Milton and millions of others of lesser note. 
Prose-poetry, so-called, is simply poetry sans meter 
and rhyme, and its poetic quality, like that of 
regular verse, depends solely upon the fact that the 
writer was a poet. Poetry depends wholly upon 
method of statement, and transcendental definitions 
of its essence must yield, at last, to the fact that 
poetry cannot be translated into another language — 
a fact which is secondary to the fundamental fact 
that there could be no poetry if there were no pods. 

Finally, I should like to see some heavy-weight 
critic of the preterist type tell us wherein much of 
our present-day poetry is inferior to that of the past. 
Why, for instance, is not Riley at hast equal to 
Burns? I am an enthusiastic admirer of Burns and 
I know him by heart; but I hold that, in many 
respects, Riley is his superior. Riley far exceeds 
him, as he does any other poet that ever wrote, in 
versatility. His concepts are as strong and brilliant, 
and his verse is certainly as smooth as are those of 
Burns. It is undeniable that the best poetic outputs 
of the present are far superior in intelligibility, 
elegance, and finish to those of all, except the recent 
past. This is because of their innocence of inversion, 
and their lesser dependence upon poetic license. 



Tethered Truants. 7 

Note the grateful directness of all of Riley's poetry. 
I challenge the critics to produce anything of the 
past that is poetically superior to Riley's "South Wind 
and the Sun." 

James Newton Matthews ranks evenly with Riley 
in everything except versatility. Will some 
accommodating critic name some poem, written from 
one hundred to one thousand years ago, which is 
superior in any respect to Matthews' "In Tempe 
Yale?" Please draw from the past, poems superior 
to many of Rudyard Kipling's, Will Hubbard- 
Kernan's, Joaquin Miller's, Algernon Swinburne's, 
Ben Parker's, Frank L. Stanton's, Ella Wheeler 
Wilcox's, Maude Andrews', Edmund Clarence 
Stedman's, and those of very many others who are 
fillipping out sparklers as the days arc told. 

Is there any physical or spiritual reason why the 
poets of now should be inferior to the poets of then ? 
In fact, does not higher civilization and greater 
refinement increase the scope of thought and 
imagination? Isn't it logically deducible that the 
poetry of the present ought to be, as it is, superior to 
that of the past? Shall natural procession stultify 
itself? 

It is aufait, I know, to rave over heroic verse that 
hears to us the tussling and tragic tang of the bloody 
long ago. But that this is merely vain, silly fashion — 
justified only by the edicts of unpoetic, stilted, and 
self-absorbed classicists — is evident to all who 
recognize the difference between the spirit of the 
savage ages, and that of the present era. My idea 



8 Tethered Truants. 

is prettily illustrated in some simple lines, written 
some time ago by my neighbor and friend, Will 
Harrell. I will quote a portion of it; enough of it 
to show he is a heretic — which he eonfesses — and a 
poet, which he denies. 

Through the sun-haunted dells of Lyric land, 

On the music-freighted breeze, 
Came a challenge song to a gladsome throng, 

That played 'neath the spangled trees. 

"Oh, I am the spirit of old-time song, 

And I come to sing to thee, 
Of the time-crown'd lays of other days— 
Of a vanished minstrelsy. 

"Of the songs that made the hearts of men 

To burn with false desire ; 
To challenge death with their dying breath, 
And to wade through seas of fire; 

"Of demons and war, and hate and fears, 
Of furies, and fire and hell, 
Of taunts and jeers, and bloody tears, 
Of chains, and the prison cell ; 

"Of men whose dearest loves were swords, 
Whose music was shrieks and groans, 
Whose highest delight was deadly fight, 
And the horror of dying moans." 

Then forth from the midst of that happy band, 

There glided a vision fair— 
"Oh, I am the spirit of present song, 
And I bid you welcome here. 

"We stand on our sun-kissed mountains, 
And speak to our laughing seas, 
And the only answer they give to us 
Are joyous melodies. 



Tethered Truants. 

'The darkest cloud that our fair land knows 
Are the shadows of bright sunbeams, 

And the only death that comes to us 
Is sleep and beautiful dreams. 



"Then on billows of mirth we'll float o'er the earth, 
And frowning Despair will laugh, 
As we write on the breeze that caresses the trees 
Dark Misery's epitaph." 

I know it is enormously immodest in me to write 
as I have written on this subject. I have- practically 
assumed to be a poet myself, and I have pitted my 
judgment against that of those high in authority. I 
herewith acknowledge that I am not a poet, and that 
my authority in the matter doesn't cover more 
than half an acre of territory. This is the least I 
should, and, as it happens, the most I could do. I 
beg my readers not to feel that my dicta are final, but 
to accept them as merely the opinions of one very 
humble and inconsequential individual. 



JOHNNY'S VIEWS ABOUT GOATS. 

Goats is aw T ful nice, an' they kin gee, an' haw, an' w r o, 
An' bock, an' make you cuss same like a man when they won't go ; 
But they are littler 'an a boss, an' stiffter like, an' they 
Kin butt the stufnn' out of anything comes in their way. 
An' their tail hangs with the down end up, an' they ain't jes' 
No good fer flies — they're on'y put that way fer looks, I guess. 
An' goats smells curuser 'an a hoss, an' they air got a beard. 
An' they whicker twict ez differnt from any hoss I ever heerd. 



10 Tethered Truants. 

LAUGHING ANNA LLDE. 

0, the laughter of my darling- 
It's my food, and it's my drink; 

It helps me when I'm thoughtless, 
And when I want to think; 

It brightens me, it lightens me 
Beyond all else beside, 

Does the singing, ringing laughter 
Of my little Anna Lide. 

When a pun breaks in upon her, 

As so happens now and then, 
0, her flood of cachination 

Beats the cackle of a hen, 
And the tickled, tittering echoes 

Dance out in circles wide, 
To the tripping, ripping laughter 

Of my sweet-heart, Anna Lide. 

When I took her to the circus, 

And the clown unloosed his wit, 
She burst her corset, laughing, 

And had a purple fit, 
And the surging, splurging audience 

Laughed till they nearly died, 
At the after- laughter laughing, 

Of my laughing Anna Lide. 

And when we went to sleigh-ride, 

And the horse ran off with us, 
And dumped us down a hillside, 

In heap promiscuous, 
The list'ning, glist'ning woodland 

In echoing mirth, replied 
To the pealing, squealing laughter 

Of my precious Anna Lide. 

When e'er I bring her gum-drops, 
Or other sweet surprise, 

< >h, the music of her laughter 
Makes me think of paradise, 



Tethered Truants. 11 

And the feeling stealing o'er me, 

Draws me closer to her side, 
To quake, and shake in concert 

With my jolly Anna Lide. 

The tender, melting cadences 

Of harpsichord, or lute, 
Or sweet and liquid warblings 

Of the silver-throated flute, 
Are fine — divine, I know it, 

But to me, are tame beside 
The trilling, thrilling laughter 

Of my pet-est Anna Lide. 

Oh, it's fresher than the twitter 

Of any singing bird — 
It's just cascading joyousness, 

The sweetest ever heard ; 
It's a drift of gift from nature 

To my will-be little bride — 
The swirling, purling laughter 

Of mv ownest Anna Lide. 



A TOMB. 



Upon a knoll, shaped in the dawn of time, 

But flanked now with a forest's vista'd gloom, 

And where the winds sob in perpetual rhyme 
With old Ohio's dirge, there is a tomb. 

No monument in tow'ring grandeur there, 

Writ o'er with all the stirring, thrilling story 
Of how a hero grand toiled up to glory 

'< rainst adverse fates that faced him everywhere, 
But just a sepulchre, where now repose 

Th' illustrious ashes of a son of man, 

Who, by his might of worth, supremely rose 

To shine conspicuous in a Nation's van; 

Just this, but sacred as the proudest one — 
The humble grave of General Harrison. 



12 Tethered Truants. 

JONAS HAWK. 

[Note.— I give this true sketch because it so strongly illustrates the 
importance of Christian union. The purpose is to help, not hurt true 
religion.] 

It was impossible to decide which he was the 
more — shrewd or practical. The rest of his character 
was merely incidental to these, but after all he was a 
fairly good citizen. 

Early in boyhood, Jonas planned to accomplish 
three grand ends, two of them having reference to his 
temporal, and the other to his eternal well-being. 
He would succeed in business; he would have a good 
time, and he would go to heaven. 

It will be remarked that he was not utterly 
peculiar in this respect, but how many have reduced 
this triplicate dream to an actuality? The obstacles 
to the full realization of this happy trinity depend 
upon the difficulty of wedding frivolity to business 
sagacity, and particularly in reconciling "a good 
time,'* (as "the boys v ' understand it) with the 
possession and practice of regulation religion. How 
many millions have tried to realize ideal temples, 
builded upon this trinity of ambitions, only to fail 
miserably in the end, Perhaps Jonas was the only 
one who ever did completely satisfy this complex 
aspiration. 

Barely second to his desire to contravene the devil 
was his determination to accumulate wealth. From 
his youth up, he had studiously observed that the 
swinker never gets rich — his toil is primarily for 
others, secondarily for himself. It was the suggestion 
of the commonest kind of common sense to reverse 



Tethered Truants. 13 

this relation. Only the tens can do this — the 
millions must drudge. It was made manifest to 
Jonas, through profound self-communion, that he 
had been " predestinated" to he one of the tens. 
Of course the tens have only the Lord to thank for 
their natural estates, which, also, is exactly true 
of the millions. This was fixed and eternal truth, 
for hadn't he heard it enunciated from the pulpit 
a thousand times? It was therefore fair, though 
wearing an appearance of partialism referential to 
the tens. The situation, as it bore on Jonas, was 
eminently satisfactory. 

With the utmost naturalness, he went into the 
patent medicine business. Being shrewd, as before 
stated, he made it go. Soon he had quite a broad 
and deep stream of dollars flowing into his exchequer. 
It must not be imagined that while be was getting 
financial affairs into satisfactory shape, he was 
neglecting his soul. Jonas was provident, as well as 
shrewd. 

That he had a soul was his very profoundest 
conviction. As matters stood, according to technical 
ecclesiasticism, that soul was lost, unless he should 
adopt the correct belief and method of life. He had 
settled it that the Bible is true — that it is the abso- 
lute, inerrant word of God. He left it to religious 
professionals to reconcile its teachings to common 
sense, and to the right. Being such a practical man, 
it did seem strange to him that God had so obscured 
the truth — that truth upon the comprehension of 
which our eternal destinies depend — that no living 



14 Tethered Truants. 

man knows positively what religions truth is ; still lie 
accepted the orthodox situation as somehoav right. 

Anyhow, there was a chance that some one of the 
creeds, founded upon the Bible, is right, or if not 
that, a fraction of the right was to be found in each. 
Jonas was a prudent business man, and did things 
upon business principles. He dealt with men at arm's 
length, exacting the last cent due him and paying 
the ultimate mill due his creditors. To him the 
thought that God is less strict and capable in his 
management of affairs than his creature, man, was 
blasphemous. Each orthodox creed insistently 
confirmed his position upon this head, teaching, as 
each does, that God is severe, exacting and 
uncompromising in the matter of religious belief, at 
least. If a man owed Jonas one hundred dollars, 
should he (Jonas) be satisfied with five? If a man 
owed God a specific quantity and quality of faith and 
performance, shall he (God) accept less? 

After pondering the matter carefully, Jonas was 
driven to the conclusion that his only safe course was 
to join a number of different churches, if not all of 
them. 

There was a double advantage in this. First, he 
would probably get a saving amount of parts of the 
total right. Second, he could have all the pleasures 
of the unreclaimed sinner without endangering his 
certainty of heaven. As a member of the Catholic 
church, he could swear, get drunk, play cards, etc. 
He had plenty of money with which to pay out, 
either before or after death. However, he wanted to 



Tethered Truants. 15 

eat meat on Friday : he didn't want to do penances, 
go to confessional, etc. As a member of the 
Protestant churches he could escape Catholic 
restrictions. As a Mormon, he could have all the 
wives he wanted. As an Israelite, Unitarian or 
Quaker, etc., he could escape the necessity oi a 
vicarious atonement, though he would be already 
enjoying its benefits. Besides, by virtue of his 
connection with the Hebrew church, he couldn't 
possibly violate the Sabbath. As a Christian 
(Campbellite) all baptismal doubt would be covered. 
Finally as a Universalist he would be saved anyhow, 
live as he might. It would have simplified the 
matter to have joined this church alone, but who 
knows that its doctrine holds a saving quantity of 
the institutional right? This doctrine struck him 
as being more worthy of God than any of the others, 
and it seemed to him certain that it is supported by, 
at least, as much scripture as backs any other 
doctrine. 

Jonas joined all these churches, but bless you, not 
in the same city. He understood the impossibility 
of that. Although, according to his theory, the more 
churches he belonged to the better were his chances 
of heaven, the churches themselves would not have 
tolerated such a proceeding as he was guilty of if it 
had been known. Remembering that they all profess 
to be "catholic," in the true sense of the word, this 
struck him as strange, if not positively inconsistent. 

Although he got to attend each church only once 
or twice each year, he kept his dues paid, and his 
delinquency in the matter of attendance was forgiven. 



16 Tethered Truants. 

When he died, his wife notified the various 
ministers of the churches to which he belonged, 
requesting eacli to officiate at the funeral. Being 
ignorant of the real situation, they all went, and — 
here, my pen fails me — you will simply have to let 
your imagination loose, dear reader. 

Jonas „ got no funeral sermon, and all of the 
preachers who did not condemn him as a rogue, 
denounced him as a lunatic. 



AMBITION'S DREAM. 

■ By Wharf-rat Johnnie.) 

Tell you what I'll be- a steam-boat mate — 

Stan' on de guard an' boss de freight; 

Boss purt nigh everone you see, 

An' dey hez to take it an' leave you be; 

Cuss all de rousters tru an' tru, 

An' deef an' dum, an' black an' blue, 

An' no one dasn't to hender you; 

Er mebbe, ef one don't work to suit, 

Grab suthin-ruther an' bust his snoot. 

Xen when she's load'nd, an' shoved thum shore, 

Stowe way de t'ings 'an cuss some more. 

When'ts all done an' she's under way, 

You stay whurever you want to stay. 

Stan' in wid de cook an' git de best — 

Don't give a durn what comes o' de rest; 

Shake dice wid de chump dat runs de bar, 

Beat him fer a drink an' a good cigar; 

Play poker at night — win ever last pot, 

An' bust de whole shootin-match, like ez not; 

Bunk-in 'thout hevin to say no prayer, 

Er any such foolishin ez thet there. 

Xaint nothin' like it— its boss, its great — 

You betcher I'll be a steam-boat mate. 



Tethered Truants. 17 

MY GRANDMOTHER'S YARD. 

Oh, it seems like ages, and ages have rolled — 

Ages, and aeons a hundred times told — 

Back into the dim of the oldest of old, 

Since the music of life was without a ritard, 

And I played with my brother in grandmother's yard. 

And it seems— 0, myst'ry of mem'ry— it seems 
But an hour, since I revelled through all of the dreams 
Of boyhood, with all of its light-headed schemes; 
When my life was the song of some far spirit bard, 
As I rollicked with Robbie in grandmother's yard. 

And that yard — there was no flashing fountain plashed there; 

No costly exotics perfumed the sweet air; 

No statues, nor prim evergreens anywhere, 

But the lowlier things which our fashions discard 
Found a home — made a heaven in grandmother's yard. 

There were tall maple trees in whose generous shade, 
On the sign-boardless grass, all the little ones played, 
And the old people lolled, and young lovers strayed 
With honey-tipped words, while the beautiful sward 
Kissed their feet, as they rambled through grandmother's yard. 

In the borders were old fashioned roses and pinks, 
And marigolds, "pineys," and poppies, and kinks 
Of sweet-williams, which furnished "the drinks" 
The bumblebee held in such extra regard: 
He always went stag'ring from grandmother's yard. 

And sweet honeysuckles climbed up by the door, 
And blue morning-glories, and gourd vines galore, 
With hollyhocks back of the house, and before, 

And there, with its sweep, and its gum aged and scarred, 
Was the mossy old well in my grandmother's yard. 

Ah, it etched itself into my yearning young soul — 

That picture of nature, no art ever stole, 

With its primitive beauty, its truth, and the whole 

Sweet cluster of mem'ries, which made it so hard 

To part me forever from grandmother's yard. 

2 



18 Tethered Truants. 



HOW IT WAS. 

The Quankling creened over the edge of the spreen 

And quaked at what it beheld; 
The Yerking flew out through the lusterless sheen, 

And the Crankadock whooped and yelled. 

The Whangdoodle, perched on the outermost rim 
Of the lonesome, disconsolate moon, 

Picked its teeth with the claw of its nethermost limb- 
Having eaten a red-headed Loon. 

A voice floated up through the fog of despair, 

From the dark abysm of Creel, 
While the septical Specter, with sanctified air, 

Was twisting the tail of an eel. 

The Jabberwock skieuked in a plaintive refrain, 
As the Phantom Phrout floated aboon, 

And the Xentogriff played on the hewgag, a plain, 
Unvarnished, and unnoted tune. 

The Jumblewhack croaked in its clammiest voice, 
As the flames burnt a hole through the dark, 

While the poor scorched Scrochetule, having no choice, 
Crept under the bed of a shark. 

The Zimpleton whirled in a measureless dance, 

And frantic'ly caught at the sprim, 
And the Sputterbuck, seeing an excellent chance, 

Knocked a Wunk from a Bungle tree limb. 

The Chaotic King, in his deep carking care, 

Smiled sickly, indefinite smiles — 
His Kingdom was done, and its great Crack O'Doom 

Was felt for trillions of miles. 

Then a new order came, and system, and laws, 

And beauty, and sweetness and light 
Supplanted the chain made of doubts and of flaws 

And lifted the world out of night. 



Tethered Truants. 19 

WALT WHITMAN. 

Did Walt Whitman write poetry? I think that 
while he was yet alive, the crities generally agreed 
that he did not. Now that he is dead, some of the 
ultraliterary have discovered a poet in him. Can 
these critics explain what it was that hid Whitman's 
poetic ability from them while he was still with us? 
Does it require tedious and protracted analysis and 
comparison to make a distinction between poetry 
and not-poetry, possible? This has always been 
a mordacions conundrum to me. I suppose it 
is because I, myself, have no difficulty in deciding 
such a question in about half a minute. If these 
slow-going critics will make it worth my while to do 
so, I will let them into the secret. 

The first thing in Whitman's writing's that struck 
me — and it struck me hard — is his outrageous 
indecency, if that is what it is. There is a "region of 
reticence" recognized and respected by Christian 
folks, the world over. Into this region he plunges 
with a headlong daring that is very startling, if it is 
not absolutely shocking. Other writers — thousands of 
them — have invaded this shunned precinct to a 
greater or less extent, but no other one, to my 
knowledge, has raided it as he has done under the 
mantle of legitimacy. Smollett and Swift did this 
field pretty thoroughly and still kept their footing in 
the domain of polite letters, but they both lived in a 
coarse age. Besides, their offenses against chastity 



20 Tethered Truants. 

were atoned for — if that can be — by doubtless genius. 
Perhaps Swinburne is Whitman's greatest rival 
within the sphere of forbiddenness. But, as an 
offset, Swinburne can show up poetry. And anyhow, 
compared to Whitman, Swinburne is a neophyte in 
aphrodisian mordancy. 

It has been said that Whitman's coarseness depends 
upon "a defect of artistic perception." Xow which 
is this phrase the more — a fact or excuse? And 
would not this unrehnement result from indifference 
to the proprieties, rather than from any artistic fault? 

It amounts to logical self-contradiction to say that 
a man of Whitman's deep insight, and far-reaching 
intuitions did not know the polite right from the 
polite wrong. It is certain that Whitman was fully 
capable of perceiving all the shades and bearings and 
effects of language in its artistic applications. He 
knew them well, but it was his earnest purpose to 
defy the social dicta of massive conservatism. It was 
his pride and glory to trample on conventionality. 
He had become disgusted with artificiality, hollow 
conformity and mawkish toadyism. His recoil 
carried him too far, that is all. He failed to 
distinguish between genuine, and fictitious con- 
vention. He knew the requirements of taste and 
delicacy by the lettered Avorlcl, but he did not believe 
in them. To say that his capability of disbelieving- 
in them depended upon defect of artistic perception 
is to give mere perceptivity important precedence of 
rational deduction. 



Tethered Truants. 21 

I believe Whitman wrote consonantly with a grand 
theory of his own, or, at least, one which he believed 
to be his own. Having early been driven out on a 
tangent that had no end, the conditions consistently 
invited to the most extreme doctrinal conclusions. 
The ultimate of high art on canvass and in marble 
ignores those interdictions which, by delicate 
incidence, are a part of high civilization. Art knows 
no social necessity. Its habitat is in a realm where 
sex does not exist, except in the abstractions of 
outline and immaterial expression. This is true only 
of the highest quality of art, spiritually and 
aBsthetically. Now, a masterpiece in high art is, in a 
transcendental sense, a poem. Why hedge poetry, 
real, and proper, with conventional limitations? It 
is the essence and spirit of a great inspiration out of 
which art's marvelous productions are evolved. It is 
a profanity — almost a blasphemy — to abridge its 
divine lexicon. Be it mine to break away from these 
arbitrary and cruel tyrannies — mine to soar into 
Heliconian heights, and traverse its starry vistas, and 
float in its iridal resplendence, free and untrammelled 
as God's sweet sunlight. 

Thus I imagine Whitman argued, and thus 
concluded. So he has written stuff which we could 
not distinguish from illy rhythmed salacity, if it 
weren't for this theory. Quite an eminent writer has 
said that "while Whitman often descends to the 
brutally obscene, there is nothing in his obscenity 
pruriently suggestive." Here is a refinement of 



22 Tethered Truants. 

distinction, which, at a superficial glance, is a little 
staggering, but its possible correctness would 
have to depend upon the undoubted fact that Mr. 
Whitman was honest and conscientious in all 
he wrote, disregarding always conventional rules, 
and deferring ever to his grand conception of poetic 
comprehensiveness. 

I should say Walt Whitman was a poet, but in my 
judgment, he has written very little poetry. There 
is a very great deal of verbal detritus in his writings. 
They contain a vast amount of that quality of sim- 
plicity which barely escapes puerility for its silly 
weakness. Then there are passion-bursts, and naming 
flights that he successfully translated into poetry. 

Walt Whitman was a philosopher, a lover of his 
kind, and an optimist. He believed in God, and with 
unbounded thankfulness, accepted it that His good- 
ness and power arc more than equal to compassing 
a hopeful destiny for us all. Walt Whitman was a, 
rugged, but beautiful character. 



WISE JOHXXY. 

I don't want no sore th'oat, ner cold into my head, 

An' I don't want no stummick ache, 'at nearly kills you dead 

I don't want no chills, an' I don't want no biles, 

An' I don't want thet offel grip 'at has so many styles; 

I don't want no measles, ner no chicken-pox, ner mumps, 

An' I don't want no ear-ache, 'at aches till it Ihes jumps — 

I on'y want a sore toe 'at purt-nigh makes me cry, 

Fer then, in place o' medicine, my mommer gives me pie. 



Tethered Truants. 23 



DE IGKERISTCE OB SOME FOLKS. 

Dey's some folks so ignernt, you couldn't make 'em blebe, 
Ef you'd argify from ebenin' twell broad daylight, 

Dat de keows kneels down, at de een' ob Chrismus ebe, 
When de clock am a strikin' fer de middle ob de night. 

Dey nebber hed no raisin', and dey all wuz mos'ly bawn 
In de dahk ob de moon, when de spotted hooperwill 

Flies low, singin' moanful-like, befo' de airly dawn, 
An' de ole gray owl hants de gable ob de mill. 

Dey '11 heah de hen crow, an' heah de pup whine, 
When he's des fas' asleep fo' de fiah in a quirl, 

An' dey doan' know de meanin' fer dey's done stone bline— 
Fo' God ! I wouldn't be so ignernt as dat ar fer de worP! 

Ole William Jawge Washington Ebenezer White, 

He thinks he's mighty smah't an' he said he nebber cotch 

No keows kneelin' down, middle-time o' Chrismus night, 
An' he sot up heap o' times pas' twelve fer to w T atch. 

An' when I splained dat keows doan nebber do dat ar, 
When any mortal human is watchin' what der 'bout. 

He larfed twell you could heah'd him half a mild, I do declar! 
An' axt me how de people den done foun' it out! 

I nebber w T uz dithgusted mo' wusser in my life, 

An' I tole him mighty plain, dat he wuz a niggah fool, 

An' I 'vized him awful solemn fer to go home to his wife, 
An' let her buy a primer-book, and staht him off to school. 



AS JOHXXY TELLS IT. 

We're got a kid 'thout no hair on its head, 
An' it don't do nothin' but nuss an' be red, 
An' taint got no name, on'y "Wee Tootsy Wee, 
An' its twict er tree times as .little as me. 



24 Tethered Truants. 

^ESTHETICS OF SUICIDE. 

Believe me, the above title is not adopted in a 
meretricious or catchy spirit. When it is remembered 
that about all things and acts have an aesthetic side, 
it is easily seen that the above heading is legitimate, 
if not positively au /"it. Even so gloomy and grave 
a thing as self-destruction has its aesthetic features. 
This has been illustrated thousands of times, and 
now, since you come to think of it, you wonder that 
the fact never struck you before — if it never did. 

Although I have never committed suicide, I feel 
competent to treat the subject more or less 
intelligently. This is because I have given special 
attention to it, but not for any reason that is of 
consequence to the reader. I think I can give you 
needed light in this important matter, and point out 
the most pleasing and acceptable methods. 

The modes of taking one's own life differ in 
accordance with the temperament, or social status of 
the auto-killer, or temperament and social status of 
the same. This explains why a merely wealthy 
person may adopt a coarse, or at best, a semi-refined 
method of putting a period to his life. He has 
money, but not intelligenee and culture. Generally, 
he jumped into wealth suddenly, and is shoddy 
because he couldn't climb out of himself, and leave 
his ignorance and coarseness behind. He likes 
loudness in everything, and will fall upon a loud plan 
of killing himself. 

On the other hand, a person on the border of 
pauperism may be fine-fibred, and highly toned. 



Tethered Truants. 25 

Such an one will not violate good taste in suicide, as 
he would not do this thing in anything else. Indeed, 
the suicide's method reflects with great constancy his 
temperament and the degree of his refinement. A 
coarse and ignorant fellow will end his life by 
swallowing powdered glass, or some corrosive poison, 
because he doesn't know any better. A vain and 
weak-minded individual will adopt some showy, or 
ingenious, or elaborate plan of shuffling. This is 
illustrated by those paranoiacs who guillotine 
themselves with a machine of their own invention 
and construction. These fellows do this in order to 
become a topic after death. 

The following suggestions and directions will be 
useful to those who contemplate suicide. Remember 
that in attempting this important act (important to 
you,) it is due society that you do not make a failure 
of it. Besides, it would lay you liable to suspicion 
and expose you to ridicule. Next, select a method 
which will not harm the sensibilities of your friends. 
Do not jump oil the roof of a four-story building, for 
that would reduce you to a "stale and unprofitable 
wad," making a most unsightly corpse of you. Your 
friends would hardly forgive you. Do not attempt 
to cut your throat, because, besides the chances ol 
failure owing to your ignorance of anatomy, it is so 
common and mussy. If you must do it by this 
method, do it out on the ground where you can't 
ruin carpets and things. Do not hang yourself, 
because strangling is very disagreeable, and criminals 
are hung by law. It is vulgar and opposed to the 



26 Tethered Truants. 

etiquette of good society. Do not throw yourself 
under an express train, because that would mangle 
you so that you would not be recognizable, in all 
probability; and anyhow an accident, or foul play 
might be suspected, so that you would not get credit 
for your act. There are many other methods which 
fall under the condemnation of our best people, but 
they will readily occur to you. Terminal facilities on 
this line are not so few and bad that we need to 
take a fourth-class method. I will now refer to a 
few styles which are in good form, and which 
naturally commend themselves to the polite and 
well bred. 

Drowning is allowable, for although temporarily 
disfiguring, it is said to be a pleasant death, and in 
the matter of death, even fashion bows a little to 
humanity. The draw-back to it is that your friends 
may be put to much trouble in recovering your body- 
Freezing though probably a pleasant death, after a 
little preliminary suffering, is generally impracticable, 
especially in summer-time. The people of Manitoba, 
who can command a blizzard at any time, enjoy 
superior advantages in this respect. A good feature 
of this style depends upon the fact that it gives you 
plenty of time for retro- and introspection, after you 
have taken the initial step. It is in good taste. 
Note. — When you have determined to go out by this 
route, always leave an explanatory letter, lest your 
friends conclude it was an accident. 

Xext to the use of unirritating lethal agents,, 
sending a bullet through the brain is the best method, 



Tethered Truants. 27 

in a humane sense. Its objective fault depends upon 
shocking detonation, and some disfigurement. It is 
a well-known fact that soldiers who are shot directly 
through the brain (anteroposterior!) 7 ) were always 
found with a smile on the face, or at least without 
lines of anguish there. This method is accepted in 
the best society. 

Any analgesic, narcotic, or anaesthetic, if pushed 
far enough will kill. Opium, however, or some one 
of its products, is deservedly the most popular in 
upper circles. . Sulphate of morphia, (morphine) is, 
l>'ir excellence, the suicide's friend. It is clean, chaste, 
pharmaceutical!) 7 elegant, and it is nearly tasteless; 
besides, you can take it so unostentatiously. 
Compare these qualities with those of an asp, and 
think of this reptile being placed in your bosom ! 
But Cleopatra lived in a rude age, and moreover 
morphine had not yet been evolved. Anyhow, the 
mode was partially justified by the taste of the 
period, which craved the tragic and dreadful, 
especially* within the sphere of royalty. 

When you have settled it that you are going to 
blot out your own existence, arrange the modus 
operandi with reference first, to the effect it will have 
upon the sensibilities of your friends, and second, in 
regard to the suffering; you must endure personally. 
There is fortunately one method which brings that 
firstly and secondly into coincident relationship. I 
refer to the morphine manner with proper modic 
accessories. Observe the following directions, and 
you will not miss it much. 



28 Teth red Truants. 

Purchase as fine a suit of clothes, black or 
otherwise, according to your age or sex, as you can 
afford. Get shaved if you are a man, and whether 
man or woman take a bath. Don your clothes, pin 
a bouquet of smilax, immortelles and cream rosebud, 
with background of arbor-vita?, on your bosom; 
slightly spray your person with the perfume most 
affected by the elite. Swallow your dose and lie 
down. The best time for this is at your usual 
retiring hour. Make it certain that you will not be 
discovered till you are safely dead. 

Having swallowed the drug, you will not have to 
wait long till tingling sensations will be felt in your 
extremities. Then soon a delicious drowsiness will 
steal over you, and you will gently float out into 
those music-haunted vistas of iridescent light which 
end in the effulgence of the echoless shore. Besides 
having faded out of life in the sweetest possible 
manner, you will have touched the very zenith of 
polite requirement in suicidal circles. This is the 
model, and if the poor approximate it as nearly as 
possible to them, their shortcomings in the matter, 
will be partly condoned. 



THE DOUBLE FIGHT. 

By Johnny. 

Bill Grubbs th'owed his cat on our dog, an' we 
Soon seen, way the fur flied, thes how tud be — 

When Bill lemme up, hardly know'd where I'm at, 
But I'm way head — pup licked his Tom cat! 



Tethered Truants. 29 

LKEKE* 

Come to my sheltering arms, Irene, 
And pillow your head on my yearning breast ; 
Pillow it there, and at last find rest 
Like a tired bird in its little nest, 

My beautiful fallen queen— 

My wayward, wand'ring Irene. 
Come to my eager arms, Irene; 
Fly from the tinsel and glitter and glare 
That dazzle the soul, as they hide the snare 
Spread for innocence everywhere, 

My beautiful fallen queen - 

My faded and jaded Irene. 

Come to my open arms, Irene; 
Spurned and despised, as you are, by all ; 
E'en by the wretch who caused your fall 
And settled upon you this dreadful pall, 
My beautiful fallen queen— 
My saddened, maddened Irene. 

Come to my outstretched arms, Irene; 
Wearied you must be of sinful sights- 
Tired and sick of the false delights 
That fill up your days and delirious nights, 
My beautiful fallen queen - 
My hunted and haunted Irene. 

Come to my hungry arms, Irene, 
Oh! I am longing and longing to prove 
To you, and the world, and the angels above, 
The infinite reach of a spiritual love, 
My beautiful fallen queen— 
My trampled and tarnished Irene. 

Then come to my lonesome arms, Irene, 
And pillow your head on my waiting breast- 
Pillow it there, and at last find rest 
Like a tired bird in its old-home nest, 

My beautiful fallen queen, 

My pitiful little Irene. 

pure in mind, will see its sermon. 



30 Tethered Truants. 

LITERARY MERIT AND SHORT STORIES. 

Literary merit — what is it? What does it consist 
in, and depend upon? It is a result of the nature of 
things that the true answer to this question does not 
instantly dictate itself. It does not define literary 
merit to say that it is that quality which satisfies a 
correct literary taste. The definition would he true 
and exact, if we could know what is meant by "a 
correct literary taste." And this is not to say there 
is no such thing as good and had taste in literature, 
hut this general sort of taste has reference to moral 
features, and is common to literature, art, manners, 
mode, etc. The coarse, mean, or bizarre are always 
in bad form, whether in literature or anything else. 

It does not answer the question to say that 
whatever brain product pleases a majority of literary 
people, conforms to the unwritten canons of literary 
good taste. This is true because, owing to the 
nature of the question, the judgment of the minority 
is entitled to about as much respect as is that of the 
majority. The fact is, there seems to be no final 
tribunal to which we may confidently appeal in the 
settlement of a question of literary taste. 

The truth of this conclusion has been illustrated 
countless thousands of times. Every new irruption 
into the universe of letters is attended with a vivid 
play and counterplay of critical scintillation. Have 
Coleridge and Wordsworth, even yet, found their 
proper niches in the temple of fame ? How criticism 
blazed with reference to their just status amongst 



Tethered TruanU 



:;i 



poets. And this is true, in greater or less degree, of 
all writers who have made a place for themselves in 
literature. Where does Swinburne belong? Which 
is the better novelist, Dickens or Thackeray? Are 
Walt Whitman's literary products the output of 
resplendent and daring genius, or the weak 
maunderings of a self-misconstrued crank? Brainy 
men take diametrically opposed positions in refer- 
ence to the merit of about every new book that 
comes out. What a sparkling eruption of multi- 
colored pro's and con's the Trilby flash created. 

These remarks are properly preliminary to a 
discussion of the question now uppermost in polite 
literary circles, namely : What constitutes merit in a 
short story? When the question is propounded, we 
instantly fall to thinking about special qualities upon 
which stress has been laid by critics, and professional 
literateurs. These include condensation, perspicuity, 
clearness, and dictional elegance, so far as rhetorical 
construction goes; and animated movement, dramatic 
force, the avoidance of tedious description, the 
eschewal of "purple twilight" effects, and the 
sedulous patronage of elided denouements, so far as 
things extra to pure belles-lettres go. 

After all though, these things constitute only the 
trestlework of a story. Dress a weak conceit ever so 
gorgeously, and it will be a weak conceit still, while 
a great, robust thought, or strong, original motif, 
tricked out in the tatters of bad grammar, will yet be 
commanding. It is a rather startling commentary 
upon literary genius that some of our strongest 
writers have to be blue-pencilled most. The Harper's 



32 Tethered Truants. 

at this writing, are running a serial written by an 
author of tremendous force, but they have to 
expurgate large portions of the work in order to 
make it conform to the requirements of present-day 
civilization. The essential quality of genius seems to 
be an intuitive lire which blinds its possessor to the 
exactions of social convention. It is too bad this is 
true, and too true it is bad, provided the fact of a 
natural condition is not also the fact of its 
righteousness. But genius will burn its way to the 
front through every obstacle, and we need not 
concern ourselves about its literary methods. It is 
true there is a quality of genius which expresses 
itself through felicity of construction, and elegance 
of diction alone. It is a wonderful gift, and when, 
as rarely happens, it is conjoined with creative 
genius, we have an epoch-making presence in the 
domain of letters. Shakspeare furnishes the 
mightiest example of this marvelous conjunction of 
psychic elements. 

As to the short story. Is it possible to formulate 
rules which shall be infallible as guides to success in 
this field? Is it probable that our most popular 
short story writers attained to their eminence 
through the punctilious observance of set principles 
in composition, or is it more probable that they have 
simply evolved through self-expression? If the good 
short story writer is more born than made, should 
we take him as an example and seek to follow in his 
footsteps? Would not this be an attempt to 
accomplish the impossible feat of self-transcension ? 



Tethered Truants. 33 

It is a consequence of natural outcomes that there 
must be a best short story writer. Who is he, or she? 
Is this pre-eminent one Bret Harte, and if so, can 
any one tell just why he is the best short story 
writer? Although, under stress of a theoretic 
necessity, Ave must admit that there is an all-round 
best short story writer, it is a lugubrious fact that no 
one on earth knows who he, or she is. It is far from 
certain that your best short story writer and mine, 
are the same. If you feel that your success must 
depend upon an assimilation of your model's 
inspirations, and style, and I feel the same with 
reference to my chosen model, and we succeed in 
doing this impossible thing, what then? A vast 
piece of moral plagiarism, if not a stupendous act of 
literary piracy, has been committed. Our manhood 
has been dwarfed, a noble vocation has been smutted, 
and two miserable imitators have been added to the 
world's horde of frauds. I think we must 
acknowledge that the Creator was right in making it 
impossible for one man or woman to take on the 
personality of another. To kindle at the flames of 
another's genius is quite another thing, and so far 
from being compromising, is gloriously commendable. 

Since then, we cannot absorb the individuality of 
another, and since it would be a bad thing to do, if 
possible, we must exclude model copying as a process 
offering no hope to the beginner. 

There is a sense in which literary copying is 
possible. This species of imitation does not depend 
upon the individual peculiarity, but upon the 



34 Tethered Truants. 

general literary vogue at the time. There are 
fashions and fads in the world of letters, which 
are no less pronounced and enslaving than are those 
in the sphere of dress and social custom. To be 
acute enough to catch this spirit, and write up 
(down?) to it, is to be shrewd and politic; I won't 
say it is to be nobly resourceful, and talented. 

The fickleness of the reading public, so often 
alluded to by publishers, is the result of surfeit. 
A Niagara of books is pouring into the swollen 
literary tide with relentless ceaselessness. The 
reading appetite is subjected to new and fresh 
temptations every day which, yielded to to the limit 
of possibility, results in literary dyspepsia. A sort 
of continuous erethism is established which can be 
partially allayed, only by the intense different. This 
is that cloy which cries perpetually for the startling 
novel, the tensive strenuous, the feverish supreme. 
Many people — Americans especially — read too much. 
That rushing spirit which controls them in business 
affairs, also governs their bookish habits. I see no 
remedy for this. The demand for the products ol 
unhealthful intension will continue, and it will be 
supplied; but this is not conducive to the development 
of a grand national literature. The hope of this 
must depend upon those literary artists who 
write under a native impulsion, and who are at least 
partial strangers to the sting of necessity's whip, and 
who are wholly free from the itch for notoriety. 

Which is the better class of stories, those "written 
for a purpose," (as if all were not written for a 



Tethered Truants. 35 

purpose) or those which seek to merely entertain? 
I should unhesitatingly say the latter; but who 
am I? A man with equal intelligence will just as 
unhesitatingly say, the former; but who is he? The 
judgment of neither of us, nor ot either class we 
represent, will be final. It seems to me that the 
element of fiction detracts from the moral force of 
precept, and this is perfectly consistent with the 
admission that a story "written for a purpose" may 
be very good indeed. What I insist on is that a 
story which is good despite its essay, or homiletic 
feature, would be better freed from these. Our 
social structure is such that we cannot write a truly 
entertaining story without incidentally spicing it 
with forceful realisms, and philosophic, or moral 
facts. These rigorous qualities are essential, and 
concentrated, and their incidental, not special 
employment in a story, it seems to me, best conserves 
the proper end of fiction. I do not object to uniting 
instruction with entertainment, but the instruction 
should follow as a consequence (not distinctly 
preplanned) of the movements in the story. It will 
b3 objected that some of the most popular novels ever 
written, were written in subservience of a particular 
principle, or doctrine, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
"Looking Backward," etc., will be cited. The fact is 
that neither of these is a novel, properly speaking. 
Agreeably to this proposition, it is also a fact that 
not one-tenth of their popularity depended upon 
their fiction element. One was a true story, based 
upon a great principle of justice and humanity; it is 



36 Tethered Truants. 

a truthful narrative sparsely decked with fictive 
blossoms. The book is nearly innocent of plot, and 
its construction required almost no imagination, or 
invention. The facts were at hand crying to be used, 
and the public was hungry for the facts. The book 
was a masterly political stroke, but not a great 
contribution to imaginative literature. It is a 
wonderful book, but not a wonderful novel. 

" Looking Backward " is a happy elaboration of a 
political theory. It is simply an illuminated diagram 
of a large hypothesis. It is not a novel. This 
reasoning, with modifications, will apply to "Ben 
Hur," and all similar works. 

The pleasure, and benefit we derive from fiction 
depends upon the satisfaction of a kind of aesthetic 
sense. Pure fiction responds to a class of ideal 
cravings, only less than do poetry, music and high art. 
It furnishes scope for imaginative excursions, and 
gives play-room to the partially conditioned creatures 
of fancy. To be the most pleasing, it should lift us 
out of the hard actual, and make guests of us in that 
upland of thought where events come as we would 
have them come, and the catastrophe is the glowing 
blossom of our fervent dreams. Because virtue 
exists out of vicious comparison, and success derives 
its possibility from resistance of obstacles, the 
employment of evil, and of villains in fiction is 
perfectly consistent with this lofty view of fiction's 
province. 

My theory as to the true function of romance 
necessarily excludes extreme realism in story writing. 



Tethered Truants. 37 

The more real a story is, the less it is fiction. If 
fiction is justified by a high-born element of our 
nature, then anything which subtracts from its 
essential quality, cannot be rationally defended. 
Realism does this. The fact that we cannot get out 
of, nor beyond nature does not justify a writer in 
leaving the same ill flavor in his reader's consciousness 
which unavoidable, actual bad happenings do. To 
do this is to injure his reader. We all get enough of 
cruel realism outside of novels. 

The foregoing has special reference to that morbid 
taste, lately developed, which delights in unpleasant 
denouements. To crave something which is 
essentially disagreeable, is to be in an abnormal 
condition. What that physical appetite which 
craves chalk, clay, spiders, etc., is to physical health, 
the appetite for the horrible and uncanny in literature 
(including bad-ending stories,) is to mental health. 
It is a form ot realism gone mad. It is literary 
hysteria. 

That milder form ot realism, championed by 
Howells and others, is less objectionable, but even it 
violates the true spirit of romance. The question, as 
viewed by this class, hangs upon the relative values 
of the actual probable, and the ideal probable in 
fiction. Since fiction is ideal, and not real, it outrages 
natural consistency to attempt to make it at once 
ideal and actual. We get our realism from 
newspapers, and every-day life, and we expect to 
rest our harried souls in the rosy cloud-land of some 
sweet dreamer. 



38 Tethered Truants. 

The model very short story, I should say, is a 
piece of verbal sketchery illustrating some illumined 
phase of life; a spirited, quiet, or dramatic single 
scene in ideal life mentally kodaked; a flash-light 
revelation, as it were, of a happy conjunction ot 
beautiful possibles. It leaves a sweet fragrance in 
your memory, and is a spiritual tonic. 

The young man or woman, who is anxious to 
become an acceptable short story writer, cannot be so 
instructed that his or her success will be assured. 
Without the possession of a marked aptitude for it, 
the young person may be taught to survey land fairly 
well. This is true of almost everything else, 
including slash-away writing, but to become even a 
mediocre in fiction or poetry — especially the latter — 
he must be peculiarly endowed. This need not be 
discouraging, for it is remarkable what a large 
proportion of intelligent young people are naturally 
equipped for, at least, fair fiction work. 

The possession of brilliant story-writing talent is 
not a guaranty against disappointments. The excess 
of supply, and the sharpness of competition cut some 
figure in hatching heart-aches in incipient authors, 
but the greatest obstacle to ready acceptances is the 
personal taste of editors. Presupposing perfect 
constructive ability on the part of the young aspirant, 
and even granting him polish and elegance in style, 
the probabilities as related to the acceptance, or 
rejection of his offerings, will depend almost wholly 
upon the agreement of his literary taste with that of 



Tethered Truants. 39 

the editor to whom he submits his wares. An editor 
may try to be catholic and charitable in this matter, 
but he cannot get away from himself. That innate 
bias which constitutes his taste, and which is an 
important constituent of his very personality, will 
infallibly control his decisions in questions involving 
literary judgment. The truth is, as it appears to me, 
that any purely literary product you may offer an 
editor will not appeal successfully to his favor, unless 
there exists a kinship between your own, and his 
method of thought. This is necessarily true with 
reference to the relationship of editor and beginner. 
After the young writer has, at last, established a 
reputation, his stories will cease to be such travellers. 
His name will have come to be a mercantile 
argument in his favor, if nothing more. 

Whether a young writer shall succeed, or not, will 
depend primarily upon his natural endowment, and 
secondarily, upon his patience and pluck. If he fail 
of securing recognition after, say twenty attempts 
with a dozen different stories, my advice would be 
that he give it up as a bad job, and try some other 
vocation. 



WISDOM. 



The Yerklet and Tomdigger flew o'er the main, 
Then reversing their wings they flew back again, 
Illustrating how, as affairs of life go, 
That some things are thus, and some things are so. 



40 Tethered Truants. 

THE DREAM CITY. 

A World's Fair Poem. 

Ah! the Dream City — the marvelous vision, 

That seemed to have dropped from some far-away star, 

Bringing with it the mystical hintings Elysian. 
Of glories that shine where the Immortals are. 

Ah! the White City— the flower of the ages, 

With stem that reached back to life's grand syllabus 

And drank of the wisdom of all of the sages, 
To scent this white epochal blossom for us. 

The Ideal City; the realized rev'ry 

Of poets who've dreamed since dreaming began— 
The wonder, whose domed beauty gave to us every 

High-born art concept, there'd slumber'd in man. 

Celestial City; for something supernal 

There breathed through it all for interpreting eyes — 
An essence from out of the spaces eternal ; 

The meaning we catch from the deeps of the skies. 

Pure Poem in White, whose rhythms and rhymings 
Were answering throbs to the questions of Art, 

And all of whose cadences, measures and chimings, 
Kept time with the world's great tumultuous heart. 

Shall a sister be born in Millennial glory, 

From out of the stress of some strenuous age, 

And repeat and enlarge the vast beautiful story 

Thou'st writ on Time's f aires t-*Time's esthetic page? 

Ah, Bloom of the Ages! the full-blown expression 
Of all of the knowledge of all of the past - 

'Tis withered, but humanity's endless procession 

Shall breathe of its fragrance, while mem'ry shall last. 



Tethered Truants. 41 

THIS AXD THAT. 

THIS. 
O, what shall we say of the tyrant who sits 

Tripodic'ly throned in his den ; 
Who lifts to the skies, or dooms— as it fits 

The marvelous moods of his pen — 
The scintillant genius who'd shine in the van, 
Along with the editor man? 

What blue malediction 's malignant enough 
For the wrecker, who makes it pastime 

To jugulate all of your jaunty prose stuff, 
And strangle your first-born of rhyme? 

What dire objurgation shall properly damn 

This echinate editor man? 

This dreadful, demoniac knight of the quill, 
This blue-pencil fiend, this hump, "We;" 

This bandit in letters who watches to spill 
The blood of your brain's progeny ; 

What acrid anathema '11 fittingly ban, 

This monster, the editor man? 

THAT. 
Lord, send us some miracle, haply to stay 

This mad manuscriptural rush; 
To clear this dammed mass of brain-dribble away, 

And scotch this scribnarious crush — 
Oh, what depth of jeer, and what height of jibe 
Will silence the immature scribe? 

Cheap fulminant fustian, altisonant bosh, 

Rhetorical tropes in distress; 
Crass tangles and jangles of jingling swash, 

With no end of flapdoodleness — 
This, this is the feast for the editor tribe, 
That is served by the immature scribe. 

Each following morning our immortal soul 

Must flounder chin-deep in a slough 
Of callow concretions of slush, till the whole 

Composture has been waded through : 
Lord, give us some potent spell wherewith to bribe 
To Hades, the immature scribe! 



42 Tethered Truants. 

THE ASCENT OF LIFE. 

All the attempts of all the philosophers to account 
for the ascent of life have been unsatisfactory. What 
a dazing thought it is, that, although we are central 
to, and a part of a mighty natural evolution which 
we can assist, we can not grasp its proximate cause. 

Darwin's work was a grand intellectual achieve- 
ment and is pregnant with momentous suggestion, 
but all who have closely studied it must have been 
disappointed in this : it does not explain how orders 
of life ascend. Even the acceptance of fortuity as a 
consistent element of development did not make such 
an exposition possible to him. This resulted from 
helpless collision with that prime obstacle which has, 
so far, defied all biological philosophers — I refer to 
the impossibility of self-transcension. Their logic has 
constantly cornered them into that ever beckoning 
fallacy, where life-planes are made to be lifted 
through an interplay between the supraphysical 
essence and dumb matter, 

Stintson Jarvis has come nearer to a rational the- 
ory than any other writer I know of. His philos- 
ophy recognizes the necessity of an energy exterior 
to self-hood in raising life-levels. God's active imma- 
nence being contradicted by all natural manifesta- 
tion, he supplies a passive all-knowledge with which 
all animated nature is in correspondence. He says : 
"Although all living things have been in corre- 
spondence with the all-knowledge, they apparently 
only acquired information, as their brain structures 
were able to be cognizant of a necessity." 



Tethered Truants. 43 

His fatal error depends upon not having explained 
how this " brain structure " could become cognizant 
of a necessity. It could not do so of its own voli- 
tion without exceeding itself — an impossibility — and 
the all-knowledge could not supply the information 
because of its passivity. 

Mr. Jarvis's philosophy furnishes another method 
of accounting for life's ascent in spirit-formativeness. 
By this is meant adult realization of ideals impressed 
upon the embryo. A male and female hare, while 
sexual vanities are on, have ideal hares in their 
minds — hares that are vastly fleeter than they. This 
mental stress, by some mysterious ultimate process, 
endows the promised hare with improved possibili- 
ties as to fleetness. I wish there could be no objec- 
tion to this beautiful theory, but are not vegetables 
as susceptible to improvement as animals? While the 
stock breeder is turning out faster trotters, is not the 
floriculturist converting single-petaled into " double" 
flowers? If it is certain that without man's intelli- 
gent supervision the double rose would have never 
been developed unless by accident, is this not equally 
true of highly developed stock? 

A study of Mr. Jarvis's theory suggests a number 
of interesting questions, thus : Is spirit forrnativeness 
possible under pressure of necessity alone? If not, is 
developmental limitation theoretically impossible ? 
Does reversion depend upon a correspondence between 
the creature and the all-knowledge? Is the practical 
limitation of development reached at that point 
where the animal has come to completely fit its 



44 Tethered Truants. 

environment? If environment is a bar to further ele- 
vation, has it not a pessimistic significance? If all 
highly cultivated forms of animal life were deprived 
of man's supervision wouldn't they revert to their 
original status? If so, what becomes of spirit-forma- 
tiveness ? 

There is only one theory that will consistently 
explain the elevation of life-gradiants. In it 
there are no final impingements upon the require- 
ment of a self-eclipsed quality or thing. I have more 
than hinted at this theory several times in my writ- 
ings. This theory depends upon the facts — as I hold 
— that mentality is a material manifestation, and that 
all nature is expressed thought. That the mind is 
material is about as demonstrable as is a geometrical 
problem. I have shown this many times in my past 
writings, but as it may happen that some readers ot 
this book have not seen these arguments, I will 
devote a short space to a discussion of this phase of 
the subject. 

Mind is either material or it is abstraction, i. e., 
nothing. There is no room for anything between 
something and nothing. Nothing is unthinkable and 
indefinable. Its (it is not an it) only quality (it has 
no quality) depends (which is impossible) upon its in- 
conceivability. We can not think of "nothing" 
because cerebration is concrete and can not contradict 
itself. Because of the substantiality of thought 
itself, you can not think of a spirit without endow- 
ing it with material qualities, such a shape, filminess, 
etc. We can not compass the abstract because some- 



Tethered Truants. 45 

thing' and nothing are not miscible. We can not de- 
scribe the not-material, so to call it, because every word 
of every language depends upon material relation- 
ships alone. 

There is a simple way of proving the materiality 
of the mind, emotions, etc. Thus, if ten persons lose 
their lives at the same time, won't there — other 
things being equal — result ten times as much grief as 
would have followed the death of one person? But 
we can not multiply abstraction. You can love 
Mary more than you love Ann. Comparison is pos- 
sible to matter alone. Ratio, even, is not abstraction ; 
first, because it can be conceived; second, because it 
is a product of material relationships. Indeed, the 
fact that it exists is the fact that it is not nothing. 
Uncounted proofs of the substantiality of all that is, 
including terms, periods, names, etc., could be pro- 
duced, but space will not allow. 

This theory certainly, probably or possibly, ac- 
counts for all phenomena. Standard philosophy 
miserably fails, especially in the realm of occultism. 
See with what avidity my theory springs to the solu- 
tion of occult mysteries. It is a primary fact that 
hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc., depend 
directly upon psychic telegraphy. Current philoso- 
phy can go no further. Under my philosophy the 
possibility of psychic telegraphy is almost entirely 
explicable. We realize that mind is a highly tenu- 
ous and active form of matter. Under specific con- 
ditions its ultimate molecules may be thrown into 
contact with those of another mind, and impress it 



46 Tethered Truants. 

with its own peculiar aura and assertiveness. It 
would be pleasant to go into the minutiae of this, but 
I have not the space. 

It is gratefully noteworthy that the latest higher 
philosophic movements are directly toward my posi- 
tion. It is agreed that the immediate cause of all 
the invisible forces is vibration. Do they mean vibra- 
tion of vacuity or abstraction? One step up, philoso- 
phers, and you will be all right. 

Finally, the last conclusions of my theory are in 
definite alignment with our deepest and most sacred 
intuitions and hopes, establishing, as they do, that 
the soul is a substantial, indestructible entity. Ac- 
cording to current philosophy the soul is but an 
ephemeral efflorescence. 

If my theory is philosophy, then this vast question 
may be solved. The solution is so natural and self- 
suggestive that to me it would seem that question of 
its validity is simple concession to conservatism. 

If an infant were born afflicted with an absence or 
the live senses, it could never be much more than a 
vegetable. This would be the case as affecting its 
relationship to man, for if a vicarious spiritual 
function existed, putting it in correspondence with 
natural expression, this would as well not be, so 
far as it and we would be concerned. Such a child 
would about certainly be a blasted bud, of the like 
of which, Nature is so immeasurably prodigal. Even 
food would have to be forced upon it, owing to the lack 
of the gustatory sense. It could never experience an 



Tethered Truants. 47 

emotion, pleasurable or otherwise. It could never 
know anything* and could never rise one little degree 
in the scale of being. 

This is instanced to enforce the fact that we are 
nothing of ourselves. Nothing is intrinsic to the un- 
trammeled ego but the capacity to expand, and this 
depends wholly upon our relation to our environ- 
ment. To sum it up : All knowledge comes from 
without ourselves. Any theory dependent upon auto- 
suggestion is necessarily false. We are creatures 
hanging upon the causeless Cause, even as suckling 
animals hang upon their mothers' teats. 

Such is our self-involvement that it is our habit to 
think of thought as something peculiar to the 
creature, man. But instead of being a thought pro- 
ducer he is a thought absorber. His whole environ- 
ment is saturated with assimilable thoughts. Nature 
is man's only tutor. The tree, the mountain, the 
river — all are thoughts, thoughts which we appro- 
priate. 

The principle, extending into human affairs, 
proves the materiality of* thought. We buy and sell 
and give away ideas — thoughts — as we do articles of 
commerce. I am now fixing my thoughts in some- 
thin o* extrinsic to myself, for you, my reader, to 
absorb. The painter transfers a concept to canvas 
which you appropriate, and so on indefinitely. 

It can easily be seen now, that the gradual ascent 
of life-forms has depended upon the reciprocal play 
of mentality between the creature and its thought- 
distributing environment. This philosophy applies 



48 Tethered Truants. 

with equal fitness whether evolution started with 
simple protoplasm, or coincidently with directly- 
created animated expressions. 

Whence the potentiality and differentiating power 
of the primal germ? The only possible answer to 
this is: They came from God. This golden thread 
of the Divine — the power of self-conservative appre- 
hension — runs through all vital being, broadening, 
through increased absorption of environment, till it 
culminates in Nature's highest earthly expression — 
man. Remembering that both the proximal and 
distal extremities of being are lost — the one in God, 
and the other in His great book, Nature — are the 
mighty possibilities of the human mind to be won- 
dered at ? Starting as a possible promise from God, 
and ending in a greater or less fulfillment of that 
promise, this sublimated essence — the soul — is the 
crowning glory f present existence. In its distinct 
eiititativeness; its limitless absorptive possibilities, 
and its marvelous qualities of apperception, it holds 
the doubtless prophecy of eternal existence. 



A JOHNSTOWN EPISODE. 

Oh, my delightful, delirious surprise, 

When she whispered the word with her beautiful eyes 

It was almost too much for a mortal to bear — 

My bliss, as I kissed her, and worshiped her there! 

* -:•:- -:•:- * 

Oh, the mad anguish — the awful despair, 
That seized on my soul, in the blackening air, 
When the flood, in its rush, and its crush, and its roar, 
Tore my Love from my arms, and my life — evermore! 



Tethered Truants. 49 



AX EPISODE. 

I saw her but once, but the image of her 

Is painted for life in my mind, 
For naught can occur that may darken or blur 

That vision of all that's refined. 
The tripping piano was throwing a shower 

Of musical pearls, and her voice, 
With its magical power, in that magical hour, 

•Enslaved me, whatever my choice. 

And I thought, as I sat by that beautiful belle, 

.Most eagerly catching the strains 
That thrillingly fell, in ripples, or swell, 

From her lips in melting refrains, 
That music and beauty are but the repeat 

Of some of the ecstasies given 
In preludings sweet, by angels who meet 

To welcome a soul into heaven. 

And I felt as I gazed in the depths of her eyes 

And saw her white soul pulsing there, 
Serene as the skies of a bright paradise 

Where cloud-shadows dark never are, 
That a moment in such a divinity's presence 

Were worth whole ages, denied 
The sweet effervescence of music in essence, 

And beauty's enthralldom beside! 



50 Tethered Truants. 



THE SCHEMING MICROBE. 

A microbe sat on a maiden's lip, right in its kissiest part, 

And murmured, "I'll work that young man off in the highest 

style of art; 
I'll send a raging colony careering through his veins, 
And they shall soak his system with a choice lot of ptomaines. 

O, I'm of the choleraic sort, and the epidemic brand. 
And you may bet the victim knows whenever I'm on hand; 
For I raise a rumpus in his bow'ls, like a slowly bursting bomb, 
Which only ends, as a general thing, when he reaches Kingdom 
Come. 

Now him that the grizzly microbe had in its meas'ly, pizen mind, 
Was a nicish, youthish laddie of the hottest-blooded kind; 
Who loved this sweetish youngish girl with an incandescent vim, 
Which only found an offset in the way that she loved him. 

Well, on the next sweet Sunday night, this nicish youthish man 
Was seated on the same chair with his darling Mary Ann ; 
And he hugged till he nearly busted her precious diaphragm, 
And kissed her sixteen hundred times with the zest of a batter- 
ing ram. 

The microbe had been swapped at least one thousand times, and 

when 
The young man left, the ornery beast was still with Mary Ann; 
When her beau was gone, she finished up by kissing "Puggy 

Wee," 
And next day that devoted pup most died of choleree. 



Tethered Truants. 51 

WHAT IS POETRY? 

It is generally claimed that poetry has never been 
defined. It is accounted a mystic essence which plays 
elusively between objectivity and subjectivity. It is 
the warmth and light of a psychic conflagration; it is 
winged ideality; it is the divine aura of intrinsic 
beauty. 

This is all very subtle, and transcendental and en- 
chanting, but it is not definition — it is poetic rhap- 
sody about probable elements of possible poetry. 

Alas! for the very alasness of it ; it is a relentless 
and implacable fact that nursery jingles are genuine 
poetry. It is poetry to the tots, as truly as the high- 
est quality of verse is poetry to the cultured poet. 
The part of the child's spiritual nature to which 
Mother Goose's melodies appeal, is exactly that part 
to which Shakespeare will ultimately appeal, if the 
child matures into a poetically gifted and refined 
scholar. The vilest doggerel ever written is poetry 
to a class. The very best and worst we can do, is to 
call this rliymic drivel a low order of poetry. 

" Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, 
Eating a Christmas pie, 
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, 
And said : " What a good boy am I ! " 

E~ow that is poetry to ten thousand times more 
people, little and big, than is the loftiest passage in 
all of Tennyson's poetic writings. Why is this true? 
Because, poetry inheres in language — not in the 
thought or concept back of it. It is true that the 
more pleasing or beautiful the thought, the more 



5-2 Teth red Truants. 

grateful, or charming will be the poetry — if the writer 
is a poet. But is not this equally true of prose? 
The great broad, bottom fact of the whole matter is 
that there is no idea, conceit, psychic phase, imagin- 
ative flight, or spiritual meaning, possible to poetry 
that is not possible to prose. 

There is a region in human consciousness where 
the aesthetic sense resides. This is the common fount 
into, and from which flow the higher artistic effects. 
A differentiation, with the result of special gifts, 
depends upon heredity and ultimate temperamental 
activities. Though not specially relevant to my 
theory, I will say a word bearing upon primary artis- 
tic endowment, as the outcome of determinational 
specificity. The remote cause of this incidence is lost 
in the occult deeps ot being, and for all we know, 
may depend upon omphalomesenteric faults. Any- 
how, the quality of the thrill brought into play by 
music is different from that exerted by poetry. The 
architectural, sculptural and painting thrills differ 
with each other, and with those of music and poetry. 
That of the architectural has a basis in the subcon- 
scious sense of geometrical fitness; that of sculpture, 
in form and expressional realism ; that of painting, in 
natural fidelity combined with imaginative outgiv- 
ings; that of music, in a pencil of thought submerged 
in peculiar emotion ; and that of poetry, time and 
melodic satisfaction (as in music also) and intellectual 
and spiritual exaltation, the latter of which pertains 
likewise to music. 

The proximate cause of all this is the physical dif- 
ferentia of our nervous organisms. The tone deaf, 



Tethered Truants. 53 

owing to an abnormal condition of Corti's organs, 
are not offended by discords, but their hearing is as 
acute as anybody's, and they may appreciate poetry 
perfectly. If the aesthetic thrill were common, this 
would be impossible. 

Poetry does not reside in the thought. The rough 
diamond does not sparkle. It must pass through the 
hands of the lapidary before it will do that. So of 
poetry; the conceit is merely the raw material out of 
which it is elaborated. The poet is the condition 
precedent, as also the condition essential to poetry, 
for in him alone inheres its possibility. Poetry does 
not exist potentially in an object, but is the subjective 
concomitant of the object in the raw, provided the 
subject is a poet. Whether, or not, an object yields 
poetry depends upon who treats it. The prosist 
transfers its beautiful features to your consciousness 
through hard, matter-of-fact language, and the result 
is prose. The poet, by the employment of verbal 
paint, and speech-music gets a poetic result. Ideality 
is simply the faculty of collating and arranging. It 
does not originate, except in a proximate sense, any 
more than genius creates outright. This is true, be- 
cause it is a psychological fact that nothing is con- 
ceivable by the human mind, the component parts of 
which do not, or did not exist. 

A very simple proof of the correctness of my posi- 
tion is seen in the untranslatability of poetry. It is 
very easy to reproduce, in any language, the thought 
upon which a poem is builded, but its poetic vehicle 
is non-transferable. Any of us may possess ourselves 
of Goethe's grandest concepts with all their depend- 



54 Tethered Truants. 

encies, but we must be poetically gifted German 
scholars to get his poetry. Difference of tongues 
gives poetry a specific form of exclusiveness, while it 
is a marvelous fact that every other member of the 
aesthetic hierarchy is wholly non-monopolistic. 

Whether a passage is poetic, or not, depends upon 
whether, or not, it touches the aesthetic sense. If it 
d< >es not, it is prose to you. If it does, it is poetry 
to you, and those of your caliber and poetic endow- 
ment. There is every quality of poetry, just as there 
is of sculpture, painting, etc. Doggerel has a thou- 
sand appreciative patrons, for every one that the 
highest quality of verse has. The real audience of 
the masters in high art is small. 

The greater a man's acquired attainments, other 
things being equal, the greater poet he will be. Al- 
though some of our best prose writers have scarcely 
been equalled in prose by poets, yet it is infallibly 
true that, the better the poet, the better the prosist. 
It is further true that the unlearned true poet will 
touch responsive areas in your heart that the most 
scholarly and polished prose writer will never reach. 
I may be called a heresiarch, but I could honestly be 
called worse names than that, If, in your judgment, 
dear reader, I have failed to establish my position, no 
harm is done. You will keep on loving poetry for 
your reason, and I will keep on loving it for mine, 
which, rhymically stated, is that : 

It carries the soul toward the realm aesthetic, 
Where Beauty and Purity and Mystery meet — 

Where thoughts are arrayed in the raiment magnetic 
Which genius weaves out of words fittingly sweet, 



Tethered Truants. 55 



PAI^ T T ME A PICTURE IN MUSIC. 

0, paint me a picture in music, my sweet, 
For thou hast the deft, inspirational skill 

To limn, at thy pleasure, in echo, the fleet, 
Evanishing shades of a blush or a thrill. 

I'd have a remote of reverberant gloom, 

Toned hitherward with an indefinite haze 

Of sighs, melting out toward a desolate tomb — 
In colors the saddest thy minor can phrase. 

Paint a vision of beauty to dazzle the soul, 
For once it was real, and shone but for me — 

A woman, whose charms in magnificent whole 
Compelled all things else, else her own destiny. 

Let her be on a couch with her warm, eager arms 
Enfolding her first-born — do this with thine art; 

Then paint, in sound's tenderest touchingest charms, 
-Her first mother-smile with her babe next her heart. 

" Too sacredly subtle " for thy grand art, even? 

Canst give me the moaning, and fever, and pain 
Of a saint falling back to her Father in Heaven ? 

Try that, oh, my darling, and try it again! 

Then picture the sob, left in her last kiss 

On thy velvety cheek, if thou canst. Ah, me! 

In some other world, maybe — never in this, 
Will such music mast'ry be given to thee. 

My picture must float from the soul of a saint, 
In the beautiful, dreamful and mystic Above. 

For never the skill that is human can paint 

The measureless depth of a mother's sweet love ! 



56 Tethered Truants. 

THE TRAMP'S GRIEVANCE. 

What kin a feller do, when Congers won't ajourn, 
But keeps a makin porpers, and don't give a dura 
Fer nobody ner nothin? Hit jes' pears to me 
'At they haint got no reel, square-out polercy. 
Make sugar-coated speeches on the tariff bill, 
Er mebbe tech up Clevelan', er go fer Sen'ter Hill — 
What does 'at 'mount to? The thing we want to see 
Is good times fer the workers, like they ust to be, 
Cause 'at gives us a show fer our white alley. 

An strikes! 
Goramighty, did anyone ever see the likes? 
An' them air Coxey gangs, 'at's trying to imertate 
Us reglers! W'y hit's reely gittin' to be of late 
'At all our routes is overworked. They aint no doubt 
'At more tramps now, new an' old, is rovin' 'bout 
Then the kentry ackshally needs. Hit's tol'ble tough, 
An' somethin' oncommern must be did, fer 'nough's 'nough. 
I caint see no help fer hit; hit's somethin I dislike, 
But the times hez druv us to hit I guess we'll hev to strike! 



OUR EVANGEL. 

Don't you see it in the sunshine of the newer way of thought? 

Don't you feel its nascent thrillings in the air? 
This breaking from the feral of self-service overwrought — 

This philanthropic throbbing everywhere? 

Don't it flash in glints of glory from the mantle of the age— 

Give thou unto thy fellow-man Ids due t 
Ts't not writ in flaming letters on the latest glowing page 

Of the nineteenth volume, now so nearly through? 

Can't you catch the social meaning of the realistic wave, 
Which is washing out the morals of the time, 

And sweeping plutocratic privilege down into its grave, 
Along with all its appanage of crime ? 



Tethered Truants. 57 

Don't you hear the distant music of the better time ahead, 
As it trembles through the moral atmosphere? 

Can't you sniff the subtle fragrance, in healing hintings shed 
From the bursting bud of glory, nearly here ? 

O, premillennial sweetness ! O, epochal starlight ! 

0, dream of poet-saint half realized ! 
The riddle is untangling, and the slowly lift'ing night 

Shall leave the yearning world re-paradised! 



REJUVENATION. 

It will be remembered by many of my readers what 
a stir it made, when Brown Seqnard announced to 
the world that he had discovered a rejuvenator. 
Such is the force of authoritative enunciation, that 
a large number of intelligent people believed the 
discovery was actual and genuine. It instantly 
became to them a natural conclusion, that after the 
human machine had fulfilled its mission and was worn 
out, it could be reversed in its course and the fiat of 
God be nullified. It was accepted as corresponding 
with all the analogies of the universe and as being 
in perfect accord with science, experienre and com- 
mon sense. It is a rampant and devastating fact that 
most people will believe anything in the name of 
medicine, as many will, in the name of religion. The 
fact is, the present arrangement with reference to life 
is all right, and it will develop before I am through, 
that such a discovery as Brown Seouard thought he 
had made, would have been a terrible calamity to the 
world. 



58 Tethered Truants. 

It sometimes happens that it is more a duty to 
violate, than to keep an oath. Such a duty now 
devolves upon me as a philosopher ami public bene- 
factor. 

True as it is, that there is not now, and never will 
be an elixir of life, such as Seqnard dreamed of, it is 
a fact that such a one existed once. But mark you, 
it was not discovered nor invented by mortal man. 
For your sake, dear reader, and for the enlighten- 
ment of countless millions of others who will read 
this, I shall now break the seal of a most sacred 
secret. 

Many years ago I spent a winter in Florida. While 
there I became acquainted with a direct descendant 
of Ponce de Leon. We became quite intimate, so 
much so that we emptied our bosoms into each other 
without stint.' I am sorry to say that Leon was a 
more or less bibulous gentleman. One day we went 
fishing together. I noticed that he had exceeded his 
tankage considerably, early as it was. I was not 
surprised therefore when he tumbled into a slough. I 
covered myself with mud, and glory, and Leonic 
gratitude by rescuing him. This at once sobered 
him, and raised his confidentialism to high-water 
mark. 

After saturating me with thanks and praises, lie 
took on a mysterious air, and leading me to a con- 
venient log, asked me to sit down, at the same time 
seating himself. After gazing on the ground in deep 
absorption for a few moments, he looked up and said : 
"Doctor, I am about to impart to you a great secret. 



Tethered Truants. 59 

You have earned this confidence by saving my lite, a 
life that was justly forfeited thirty years ago. I en- 
join upon you the most solemn, and sacred secrecy. 

I readily promised to keep his secret, and he told 
me the following remarkable storv: At the time of 
the Spanish invasion, there did exist in central Flor- 
ida a rejuvenating spring. Ponce de Leon actually 
found it, but for good reasons made a close, inviola- 
ble family secret of it. He discovered it through the 
agency of an old Indian who, after conducting him to 
it, strongly urged him to drink its water regularly 
for a month, assuring him that it would restore him 
to vigorous youth. Fall-up-to-heaven (that was the 
old man's name) explained that the reason he himself 
had not drank of it, was that, by a law ot his tribe, 
his children could not inherit his title and decorations 
unless he reached the age of ninety before dying. 
His next birth-day would dissipate the severe con- 
tingency, when he proposed to adopt this water as 
his regular tipple. He further explained that the 
miraculous quality of the water depended upon the 
august fact that the Great Spirit had dipped his 
finger in this spring. 

Leon understood the Indian character well, so after 
profusely thanking Fall-up-to-heaven for his services, 
he very courteously and deftly slipped the eager 
blade of a stilletto between his ribs. 

Leon had three very active enemies whom he man- 
aged to have thrown into prison, and he so contrived 
it that they got only this water to drink. The result 
was eminently satisfactory — these enemies ceased to 



60 Tethered Truants. 

pester him. Vague and weird rumors floated about 
for a while, but more important matters soon replaced 
them. This secret was transmitted from generation 
to generation, always being kept in narrow and direct 
Leonic line till it was lodged in my friend, the last 
of the name. It is no matter how it came about, but 
my Spanish friend's name was Michael Leon. 

Michael didn't take much stock in this story of his 
historic ancestor, but still it haunted him like a 
superstition will the best of us. He determined to 
test the water of this fountain of youth, merely to 
prove to himself that he didn't believe in it. 

In his neighborhood lived a man who had careered 
into the senilit} r of centennialism. In plain words he 
was a hundred years old, and like most old noodles 
wanted to be young again. My friend decided to 
gratify him; not so much in an accommodative spirit, 
as to satisfy an experimental passion. He took the 
old fellow in charge, and commenced giving him of 
this vital water. The effect was astounding. In a 
month the old gentleman was thrown back to fifty. 
Although now he began to take less of the water, his 
flight cradleward continued. Soon he was a young 
man again — a very young man — a dude, sporting a 
cane and honing for a mustache. From that pathetic 
period he was hurried into boyhood. Here nature 
halted a little, as if in revenge for the outrage being 
perpetrated upon her, and detained young Leon till 
he had suffered all of a boy's woes. He got licked for 
indulging his riparian instincts, got licked for steal- 
ing into the circus, got licked for " playing for keeps," 



Tethered Truants. 61 

got licked for filching green apples, and afterward 
had to howl with the gripes. His teacher printed rail- 
road maps on his person with the birch, and he was 
not allowed to rob birds' nests. Then followed 
mumps, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, measles, teething, 
etc. He had to have all these backward. This so 
puzzled the doctors (God bless the doctors) that 
young Leon recovered in each instance. He was 
soon in the moist, rattle-box, paregoric period ot 
existence. Back he kept going until he was only one 
little minute old. What might have now happened, 
if his mother had been living, is purely conjectural. 
But nature is full of resources, and was equal to the 
emergency. She kept minifying Leon till finally they 
had to use a microscope to see him. There is no use 
of tracing him further. He was obliterated from the 
universe, as an intelligent entity, and was resolved 
into empty, void and vacuous nothingness. 

After completing the story, Michael drew a deep 
sigh, and then proceeded to explain that it was 
remorse for this deed that had driven him to drink. 
He felt that he had committed the unpardonable sin. 
He had balked Fate, jugulated Destiny, defied God 
and extinguished a human soul. 



Where are you going, my pretty maid? 
I'm going a knitting, sir, she said. 
I'd like to kiss you, my pretty maid; 
"O, nit; O, nit, kind sir," she said. 



Tethered Truants. 



THE MOOK 

"The mild-mannered moon" — Ah! what is't I wonder? 

It's just as respectable 'nd old as the earth? 
AVas it born when young planets split widely asunder, 

In travail attending a satellite's birth? 

Did it slip by fortuity into existence, 

When In-the- Beginning had hardly begun? 
Or was it thrown off by adjustive persistence 

From what settled into an ebulant sun? 

Did it leap in its glory from out of the feral 

Of chaos, in blackness of vacuous night, 
And join in the triumphant song of the spheral 

Reflectors of God's own ineffable light? 

Or was it just simply, directly created, 

As told by the patriarchs ancient, who trod 

The earth, when these mysteries were freshly related 
To them, and the awful omnipotent God? 

Has it always been dead? Have its grand, rugged features 
Ne'er smiled 'neath the warm, coaxing light of the sun? 

Did never intelligent, reverent creatures 

Live and move there since old Nature begun? 

Aye, hearts have throbbed love in that worldlet»supernal, 
And eyes have shed tears, and ambitions have burned, 

Else the fitness of things, by the law that's eternal, 
Is violate, and all of analogy spurned. 

How far, through the netherward reaches abysmal 

Of time, must query be hopefully hurled, 
To strike a response in the shock cataclysmal 

That wrecked a once living and beautiful world? 

The secret is deep in oblivion, and never 

Shall light of it break on our curious souls, 

Till God shall have given us all of forever 

To study the things which his wisdom controls. 



Tethered Truants. 



THE LITTLE TO* SOLDIER. 

O, I'm a tin soldier sir, and don't you forget, 

And I'm gaudy in my bright regimentals all the time; 

I'm always on review, sir, and I'm the dainty pet 
Of every little urchin, sir, in every Christian clime. 

The small boy, he's my captain, sir, and very captain, too, 
For he is peremptory, sir, and boss as he can be — 

He's moody and he's crotchety; he's false and he is true, 
But through it all he sticketh to, and never shaketh me. 

I "eyes right;" I "eyes left;" I mark time; I march; 

I double quick like blazes, sir, when he is in a pet — 
No odds how rough he uses me, I'm still as stiff as starch, 

For I'm his little soldier, sir— his tin-y martinet. 

You humans think that just because we're little, and w r e're tin, 
We do but little thinking, and we have no views at all, 

But if you'd heard us howl about our wrongs, you'd thought 
we'd been 
Consorting with ward bummers and w r ere full of beer and gall. 

But since the great convention that we held within a dream, 
Which o'ershadow'd a great statesman, some several years ago, 

We've had no need of kicking, sir, and truly it does seem 

We're the happiest little soldiers in the wide world, don't 
you know. 

We knew then that the "import" taunt, that oft had made us 
blush 

With shame and indignation, sir, would slip into the past, 
For well we knew McKinley'd put an everlasting hush 

Upon that thing, and we would be Americans, at last. 



64 Tethered Truants. 

EPISODE IX A HOMELY MAX'S LIFE. 

Some books are lies fr?e end to end, 

An' some great lies hae ne'er been penned, 

-:•:- ***** * * 

But this that I am gaun to tell, 
Which lately on a night befel, 

Is just as true's the deiPs in h 1 

Or [Cripple Creek]. Burns. 

An old friend of mine who is a famous dialect poet 
and lecturer, once said to me: "Doc, I am glad I 
am homely." 

"Why so?" I inquired. 

"Because,*' said he, "there is more opportunity for 
positive expression in an ugly face than in a pretty 
one. A dead level of unrelieved beauty is fascinat- 
ingly monotonous, giving the ongazer's aesthetic sense 
no hump to bump against. It wearies because it 
surfeits." 

I agreed to this with nervous promptitude; 
because, I suppose, I am, myself, such a desecration 
of God's image. For the moment, that dubious 
sentiment which constrained the fox to champion 
taillessness, overrode my real feelings, and I forgot 
how I abhor my own physical hatefulness. So I 
said assistively : 

"It must be infinitely tiresome and unsatisfactory 
for one to know that his or her personal appearance 
compasses the ultimate in physical beauty. And 
then, a faultless face cannot possibly give us a fair 
shake in the formation of a judgment as to the 
possessor's character. This is so because, say what 



Tethered Iruants. 65 

you will, beauty of person is an effective special 
pleader. Nineteen out of twenty perfectly beautiful 
faces must lie, for the spirits of their owners do not 
fit them. It is true," said I with soothing satisfaction, 
"your face and mine are lies, for onr souls at their 
worst can't be as uninviting as onr faces at their best. 
This kind of a lie, you will notice," I continued with 
extreme self- felicitation, "has the quality of being 
more righteous than the truth. I suspect if every 
human being were turned inside out, the moral and 
physical balance of the world would suffer little dis- 
turbance." 

To all this he assented unctuously. 

This conversation took place years ago, when, 
impossible as it may seem, I must have been years- 
ago less homely than I am now. Since that time I 
have been reminded thousands of times of my 
physical illfavor by multiform, but always barbed 
circumstances, or exigencies. These would bring out 
the badinage of friends; the honest expressions of 
innocent childhood; the shrinking shyness of the 
ladies ; social slights, etc. But the climacteric episode 
of my lite — dependent upon my homeliness — I exper- 
ienced only a few days ago. I have barely recovered 
sufficiently to relate it. 

It was in the evening, and I was trying: to fiorire 
out the toxic difference between ptomaines and the 
detritus of retrograde metamorphosis (for I am bound 
to keep in the front of my profession) when the door 
was opened and — it came in. I am conscientious, if 
I am ugly, and that is why I say it. For the sake of 



m Tethered Truants. 

intelligibility, I suppose I shall have to say that the 
"it" was, and, tor that matter still is, a woman. It 
is sufficient to say she is precisely as much more 
homely than I, as it is possible for the ugliest woman 
in the world to be homelier than the ugliest man in 
the world. Ladies will please take no offense, tor I 
gladly concede the ultimate beauty possibility of a 
man cannot, on tip-toe, reach up to the three-tenths 
mark of woman's final possibility in this respect. 

I confess I was startled, and I — that is, I 
acknowledge she too was startled. It was a mutual, 
and reciprocal startle. If her face hadn't been so 
warped and leathery, and her chin so minutely small 
and so receding, and her hair had been distinguishable 
from excelsior, and her ears had been mates, and her 
eyes had been a different shade of colorlessness, and 
her nose had not been so red and ultrapug, and her 
mouth had been no worse than that of a cattish, and 
her pimples had been a few fewer, and her freckles 
had been fresher, and her moles had been better 
distributed, she would have been from one-half to 
one per cent, less hideous. 

For a few minutes we gazed at each other in 
accusing disgust, then I spoke. I said in tones 
strangely unbland: '-Madame, can I do anything for 

you?" 

In a voice you could tile a saw with, and in the 
stabbingest staccato, she answered: "You can — you 
can sit down and look at me." 

I did sit down and look at her — I couldn't help it. 
I was reversely charmed. 



Tethered Truants. 67 

It is a clammy fact that when she put on her 
goggles, her appearance Avas improved. Having 
adjusted them with spinsteristic precisiveness, she 
produced a scratchbook and pencil, and began to do 
me in word-sketchery. Each gogglear glance was a 
flash from hades, and each pencil stroke was a slash 
into my immortal soul. The twistings of her mouth, 
synchronously with her pencil movements, sent 
frozen thrills up my spine. As if my woes were not 
enough, she put away her note-book and pencil, and 
before I could guess what she was about, drew from 
her valise a loaded kodak! 

I began to squirm, but a look, and a shake of her 
long bony finger quieted me — it would have quieted 
a cyclone. It was nothing to her that I would have 
a thousand times rather had her substitute a shot 
gun — she took deliberate aim and pulled the trigger! 

After caring tenderly for her instrument, she 
explained in the most business-like way that she was 
in the secret service of Rudyard Kipling who, she 
said was getting up a new illustrated novel. The 
particular characters are to be the handsomest man, 
and most beautiful woman, and the homeliest man 
and ugliest woman in the world. 

They had had little trouble in finding the beauties, 
for pictures of such are plentiful, and they themselves, 
don't study to keep out of sight. She had been out 
six months hunting for the homliest man, but 
thanked fortune she had found him. The novelist 
would be delighted. With her notes as to my 
complexion, color of exe^, facial squints, etc., backed 



68 Tethered Truants. 

by the photo, he could challenge the world to produce 
an equal in human homeliness. She still had a task 
before her (this, graciously), and that was to find tfa 
ugliest woman ! 

With a metallic smile, and brittle little nod, she 
abrubtlj vanished, just as I dropped from my chair. 



FRENETIC F ANGLES. 

They're wove from the wimples of Hell's wreaking wrangles 

That twist themselves through the unseen and the seen ; 
From twittings and tweakings of termagant tangles 

Of tangible tantrums beslavered between; 
From devastant dinks neologic that dangle 

Adown mordant mystery's perilous plane; 
From fimbriate, fluttering figments that sprangle 

In flames from a redolent, riotous brain; 
From jejune jereeds, with their jumble and jangle 

Of fancy and fact and flamboyant pretense; 
From thought threshed to threads against each angry angle 

Of square, solvent sanity's straight common sense; 
From saturnine starbeams that spatter and spangle 

The morbid mind's misty and flecked firmament; 
From insane aspirings that stifle and strangle 

Each scintillant, soaring and swelling intent; 
From sulphurous soul-taints that murder and mangle 

Ideal imag'nings and imminent flights; — 
They're fake frenzy, run into belles-lettres bangle, 

To ruin and ravage your nerves and your nights. 
As if the vain vapor of all this bawd brangle 

Were not all we need of the nebulous funk, 
The poster pervades the full frenetic fangle, 

Blue-blazing its dev'lish and damnable drunk! 



Tethered Truants. 69 



THE POPPY'S SPELL. 

There is a little chary, charming maiden fairy, 
And she dwelleth 'mongst the roses in a far-ofi* 
hidden isle; 
And the secrets of love's hist'ry, with its pains and 
joys and myst'ry. 
Are tangled in the tissue of her sweet, seraphic smile. 

This mystic, marvel maiden, from her far-off floral Aiden, 
Cometh to me in m}^ visions as I float through 
starry skies, 
And I breathe the subtle essence of the fragrance of 
her presence, 
As I bathe me in the glory of her drinking, dreamful eyes. 

In music-haunted vistas our shifting place of tryst is, 
Where splintered star-light melts into the moon's 

quiescent ray; 
Where rainbow paths concentre toward the starry arch, 

where enter 
The redeemed into the glory of their everlasting day. 

'T is there I ever meet her, and she groweth ever sweeter, 
Like music floating to me from the mem'ry-haunted 
past; 
And I hang upon her kisses, through seried thrills 
of blisses, 
Till I pray for it to last, as eternity shall last! 



Tethered Truants. 



AS TO WALKING. 

I saw her first at the Masons' ball, 
A whirl in the wild romance 

Of Zikoff's maddest waltz of all- 
Fit for the gods to dance— 

And there, in the glory of golden light 
And flashing gems, to me 

She seemed an angel, and that night 
I walked in reverie. 

I saw her next in a picnic grove— 

The sparkling central light 
Of a throng of girls and beaux, in love 

With her voice and her beauty bright, 
And a gentle friend presented me 

To my little charmer there, 
Whose smile, as she bowed in courtesy, 

Just made me " walk on air." 

And next at her lovely home I met 

This sweetest girl of all — 
This rightful, this unquestioned pet 

At home or banquet hall, 
And at "good-night," somewhat there seemed 

To be in her tender tones. 
That hinted possibly of love ; I dreamed 

That night I "walked on thrones! " 

Again, and oft, I called on her, 

Drawn by a spell divine, 
Till my dear, delightful vanquisher 

Had promised to be mine, 
And then on rainbows, and the rims 

Of clouds in sunset gold, 
Soothed by silent sweet love-hymns, 

In ecstasv I strolled. 



Tethered Truants. 

We're married now, and wildering nights 

Of first-stage love are o'er — 
No more of stolen-kiss delights, 

Of half doubt thrills no more. 
My love was strong — no flaws nor sulk 

Weakened its grip profound, 
But now it weighs more bulk for bulk, 

And I walk upon the ground. 



BILL WARWICK 

Bill Warnick wuz a hackman, which 

He'd worked up to the box, 
Frum a liv'ry stable rouster, in 

The firm of Brown and Cox ; 
And he could snatch the ribbins with 

A scientific air, 
That made the other hackmen sick 

With envy and despair. 

You'd think he driv too rickless, jes' 

To see him whirlin' th'ough 
The thickest of the city, and 

The outside sooburbs, too; 
But he never hed no c'lission, ner 

No other accident, 
Fer he wuz alius on the watch, 

Whuchever way he went. 

He wuz up in his perfession- he 

Could buzz a passenger 
Successful half a square, right th'ough 

The winder of a keer; 
'N he know'd the human way so well,. 

He never missed a fit 
When't come to makin' charges, an' 

Securin' his perkisit. 



72 Tethered Truants. 

When " the boys" would want a hack, fer 

To hell a night away, 
Bill Warnick alius got the job 

With double extry pay, 
Fer they know'd he wuz a safe 'un, an' 

He'd shet his jaws and swing. 
Before he'd sile their characters 

By givin' up a thing. 

Bill wuz the boss at funerals ! 

His bosses' stiddy gait 
Jes' couldn't be discounted by 

No hearse team in the State, 
An' I hev railly seed him, when 

"The friends " wuz standin' by, 
Keach fer his hankercher, an' mop 

The briny frum his eye. 

I've know'd Bill frum a kid, and ust 

To make no bones to say 
To anyone, " I'll bet the drinks 

He'll strike it big- some day." 
An' hit hez turned out that-a-way 

Jes' ez I alius said — 
Bill Warnick's got a stone front now, 

'N he swings a lofty head. 

An' how it happened is jes this : 

He got a soft posish 
Ez coachman fer a millionaire, 

'N he hooked a daisy fish, 
Fer he up an' morried the gov'ner's gal — 

The old man's only heir— 
An' nen the ole man croaked, an' Bill, 

He got the lion's share. 



They wuz a little boy 'at would'nt say his prayers, 
An' 'at there little boy he got et up by the bears. 
An' they wuz a little girl 'at never would say hern— 
The bears, they et her up too, when it come her turn! 



Tethered Truants. 
VERNAL MUSE-INGS. 

The green grass is a greening, and 

A spreading everywhere, 
And the blue-birds are careening, as 

They twitter through the air. 

The brooklet is a brooking the 

Intrusion of the sedge, 
And the baby willows crooking toward 

Its opalescent edge. 

The crocus is a croaking in 

A very cheery mood, 
While the violets are soaking up 

The spirit of the wood. 

Sweet-william is a willing with 

His total little might, 
That the dews will keep distilling ev'ry 

Minute of the night; 

While the bees keep on a being, and 
A buzzing 'mong the flowers 

As the fleeting moments, fleeing, stack 
Themselves up into hours. 

The butterfly 's a-flying in 

A zigzag of delight, 
And the bumblebee is trying to 

Outclass her all his might ; 

While the red-bud is a budding with 

A treeish sort of glee, 
And the cat-bird is a flooding all 

The scene with melody. 

Oh, Spring is here a springing into 

Sweeter moods each day, 
And all the time she 's flinging newer 

Charms along our way. 



74 Tethered Truants. 

LETTER FROM A "SUBJECT." 

My Dear Doctor Cooper : — 

I have lived these years lost in a halo of mystery. 
Mystery, not to me,bnt to all others save the redeem- 
ing remnant who are locked dp in " insane'* asylums. 
It came about this way: In common with the rest 
of humanity, I was born insane, but, unlike the great 
majority, I bloomed into sanity at the age ot thirty- 
live, and Avas promptly .locked up by my friends. The 
signal of my emergence from mental darkness into 
intellectual lucidity was the induction of a frog into 
the logical basis of my being. lie now sits glowing 
in an emerald nimbus, squarely on that insular mar- 
vel, the island of Kiel. A friend of mine here has a 
chick within his cranium, which is ever pecking to 
get out. If it should succeed, he would instantly be 
plunged into insanity. Another associate of mine 
has a nugget of ffold lodged between two of his fron- 
tal convolutions. The peculiar location of this gold, 
in relation with the principle of intrinsic concentric- 
ity, makes him the wealthiest man in the world. 
Still another associate of mine, through the crystali- 
zation of religious impulse in the pituitary body, has 
actually become Christ ! So you see I am in most 
distinguished company. 

Ah, I seem to have wandered from the central and 
governing fact as affecting myself. This is a peculi- 
arity of the absolutely sane. On such there is a 
divine pressure, which, in its orgasmic tensiveness 
and vast comprehensiveness, contemns conventional 



Tethered Truants. 75 

eongruity. The frog — celestial batrachian ! He is 
a cerebral codicil, which makes the impossible poss- 
ible. He is a psychic addendum, warm from the 
caress of Deilic conception. Owing to his presence, 
prescience is a commonplace with me. All that is 
recondite pays itself out to my consciousness in a 
series of vivid and implacable certitudes. To me the 
occult is a daring self-contradiction, for nothing can 
escape the penetrative eternity of my acumen. Ha! 
I fillip to Hades the miserable crutches upon which 
the insane must hobble to reach even the foot of the 
shining ladder, whose top round is far beneath my 
feet! My judgments are therefore infallible, and all 
my conclusions, of course, irreversible. You will say 
there is a tinge of the egotistic about this. You are 
of the insane mass; let a lunatic, so called, read it 
and he will pronounce differently. 

My dear doctor, I sincerely and profoundly pity 
you and all your kind. Lost to you are all the 
superlatively awful and supernally beautiful utter- 
ances of the truly sane. Ah, ravishing frog — sweet 
centerstance from which is evolved all circumstance — 
to thee I owe a clairvoyance which compasses, in its 
infinite totality, the universe ! Yes doctor, I pity 
you. Better is incurious ignorance than tethered 
ambition. 

Xow, the fact is, Maeterlinck is one of the clearest 
and most intelligible writers in the world. To you 
and your compeers, his phrasings are a melange of 
anfractuose and adumbrous vacuities. You don't 
understand Ibsen and Zola. Much of the fin de 



76 Tethered Truants. 

siecle literature found in the Brownie Magazines is 
unintelligible to you. Its frenetic light-bursts, trans- 
categorematic ascents, and iridal outflights daze and 
stun you. You don't even know whether Walt 
Whitman is a poet, or not. In music, Wagner is a 
gnawing conundrum to you. Those plangent con- 
clammations, ganglionic contrapuntalisms, and won- 
drous assonant perspectives arc all lost on you. Oh, 
batrachianic jewel — what would life be without thee ! 
But I must close. 

Yours compassionately, 

I. X. Sanity. 



A SIMPLE TALE AX1> TRUE. 

I knew a maiden once, a most intense 
Peculiar girl. If others, like to her, 
Have graced the earth, it ne'er hath been 
Permitted me to see them, or to know 
Of them. A beauty more supernal in 
Its cast than ever glorified the dream 
Of painter or of poet— that was hers, 
And hers the warm eternal graces that 
Bestar the sinless soul. Back through a mist 
Of spent and dreary years, I see her still — 
Love's own eidolon, draped in a myst'ry of 
Beatitude. 

My junior by a year 
Of time, she was my senior by a score 
Of years in wisdom; for, instinct to her 
Were all the various costly lessons of 
Experience. Unconsciously she was 
My mentor, and a beacon whose sweet light 
E'er guided safely my uncertain feet. 
And I loved her with all the burning zeal 



Tethered Truants. 

Of youth, and marv'lously enough, 'tis true 
That she loved me. 

And she fell ill -a mere 
Attack of simple fever 'twas, as I 
Know now. Her anxious mother summoned then 
Old Doctor Henderson, a good old man, 
But thralled by book authority, and held 
In line legitimate by rig'rous old 
Traditions, and by ancient ethic force. 
I stood near by when he was come, and saw 
Him auscultate, percuss, look at the tongue, 
And feel the pulse, and I remember now 
The old man's corrugated brow, and how 
His Greekish utterances stunned me, and 
Struck awe into my soul. 

I wondered, in 
My innocence, what science would require 
In such a case, and even felt (but I 
Was just a boy) 'twere a profanity 
To force coarse drugs between those cherry lips, 
And vesicate that chaste and tender breast. 
How bold it was of me to question thus 
The wisdom of harsh means — to doubt it so, 
Because it seemed to me unnatural 
That truth ; that scientific truth could shock 
The soul repellently. However, I 
Was but a boy, a mere unreasoning boy, 
And such a boy in love, at that. 

The old 
Bsnt doctor fumbled in his case and brought 
Forth various sick'ning-odored packages, 
And funny little vials. Producing then 
A villainous looking little instrument, 
Keen-edged and glistening, he started from 
My sweetheart's round white arm a crimson jet, 
And let it speed till nearing syncope 
Warned him to stop the flow. He then spread o'er 
Her snowy breast a cruel plaster of 
Cantharides, issued powders, and pills, 
Then whisp'ring solemn admonitions to 



78 Tethered Truants. 

The anxious mother, went his way. Next day 

He came to find his patient worse, and so 

He doubled doses, drew more blood and placed 

A rigid interdict upon the use 

Of water, whether for drink or bath. And so 

He came and went, and every time he came, 

He shook his head more om'nously, and then 

Increased the dose, the better to coerce 

Th' refract'ry malady. 

Ah, then came days 
That burned their dates into my soul— days full 
Of torture, frightful as a dream of hell 
For her, the gentle victim there; replete 
With blasted hope, and anguish measureless 
For that fond mother, and a shuddering awe 
And nameless woe for me. 

The thrilling little pulse 
I'd often felt in play became a hard 
And corded flutter, and the skin which erst 
Outvied the lily in its whiteness and 
Was soft as air, took on a pallor and 
A harshness strange to me; the cheeks which I * 
Had likened, in my boyish dalliance, to 
Wild roses dipped in sunrise, burned now with 
A hectic flame; the lips so dewy and 
So "crimson threaded" and so kissy far 
Beyond resistance once, were charred and cracked 
And bleeding, and the eyes within whose clear 
And trancing depths my soul had lost itself 
A thousand times, glowed now with luster, caught 
From mania, and "water! water! phase, 
Some water ! " was the steadily weak'ning cry 
That ever came from those poor scorching lips. 
The trembling little arms imploringly 
Were raised a hundred times a day, and we 
Were all besought so pleadingly to give 
Her water! ever water! Oh, it seemed 
The whole sweet being of our dying pet 
Was merged into a pitiful appeal 
For water—" just enough to wet my lips! " 



Tethered Truants. 

Impulsively sometimes, the mother 'd snatch 
A cup to give her child a drink, and my 
Weak heart (unscientific heart) would beat 
Applause, when suddenly a keen-edged, and 
A cruel recollection would restrain 
Her eager arm -the doctor 'd said with deep 
And urgent emphasis : " Water she must 
Not have— 'twill kill the child." 



Upon a couch 
White as the driven snow, there lay the last 
Sweet semblance of a being that had been 
AH, but divine. The lines of anguish wrought 
Upon her open brow by pangs of thirst, 
Had all evanished in the chill of death, 
And now only the pure and placid charm 
That innocence had painted there remained. 
On bended knees, with head bowed low upon 
Her idol's form, the mother wept. And it 
Did seem that her poor broken heart would bleed 
Itself away in tears. And I sat like 
A stony statue there, glaring in dazed 
And helpless shock out into vacancy. 

A cursed superstitious heresy 
That would not down, (remember I was but 
A boy) kept forcing up unorthodox 
Suggestions, prompting me, despite myself, 
To doubt the soundness of a doctrine which 
Enjoined depletion, fed the fire of thirst, 
But with relentless fiendishness, refused 
To heed the urgent cry for drink. 

Softly 
The doctor entered, and slow walked to where 
The white form lay. He gazed a while upon 
The wreck of youth and beauty there, and then 
Low bending o'er the wailing mother said: 
" The Lord hath given ; the Lord hath taken away. 



so Tethered Truants. 



FO'TH-JULY. 

BY JOHNNY. 

Fo'th-July — 'at's the time 't suits me ; 
Tell you why : 
Cause you don't do nary thing but play, 
An' kin holler ez loud ez you want all day — 

Dast to shoot pist'ls, 'n 'e cops leaves you be, 
On Fo'th-July. 

An' shootin' crackers! Geminee, what fun, 
When a girl's closte by 
'X you th'ow one down right by her heels, 
An' watch when it busts— dog-gone, but she squeals, 
An' don't we holler, when she tries to run 
Frurn Fo'th-July! 

Git burnt purty bad sometimes, 'n if one 
Busts closte 'tyer eye, 
Mebbe 't'll scorch yer eye-winkers off, 
by they'll grow back agin, like-'nough — 
Got to git ust to 'at kind o' fun 
On Fo'th-July. 

Pap's go' to git a toy pist'l fer me, 

An' go' to buy 

Most shootin' crackers, an' fire-works, too, 

An' arniky, an' stick-plaster, 'nough to do ; 

"Nen we'll be good an' ready," says he, 

" Fer Fo'th-July. 

Like Chrismus purty well— hang up yer socks, 
Nen bime-by 
Santy Claus puts in whole lots o' toy things — 
'At's all right, but they ain't no time brings 
Sich fun fer boys — fun 'at thes knocks, 
Like Fo'th-July. 



Tethered Truants. 81 

A RETICENT REFORMER. 

Not long ago a very singular character quitted for- 
ever cys-Stygian scenes. His real name was James 
Emmons, though he was known here by the signifi- 
cant cognomen of Reticent Lonesome, which the 
riff-raff contracted into "Ret. Lone." 

He was a man of splendid physique, and his bear- 
ing combined princeliness with true humility. He 
must have been very handsome when young, for in 
his old age the attractiveness of his face, with its 
steel gray eyes and habitual smile, was remarkable. 
He lived entirely alone on the main street in the 
busiest part of our little city. Notwithstanding 
this, no one except himself knew anything about the 
internal arrangements of his home. He dressed 
with scrupulous care and in the very latest styles. 
He had no known employment, but seemed to 
have no end of means. He took great loads of 
periodicals and was an omnivorous reader. He was 
never known to post or receive a letter. He was a 
hermit in the heart of a city, if you will pardon the 
paradox. There was an invisible Chinese wall about 
him — a thus-far-and-no-farther nimbus that held the 
world away from him. Very proud was the man 
who, by favoring stress of some social exigency, was 
permitted to exchange a few frugal sentences with 
him. Thus he moved amongst us for years, a silent 
exponent of latent strength, a living sermon from an 
uninterpretable text. 

One day, to my infinite surprise and bewilderment. 



82 Tethered Truante. 

he entered my office. With a courtly bow, he seated 
himself and said: "You are a physician. I am 
somewhat ailing. In my ease you will have to rely 
wholly upon objective symptoms for guidance." 
With this he relapsed into a silence that I could 
almost hear, it was so pronounced and self-assertive. 
I knew that his conversation was ended. 

I saw in his oral commissures and conjunctiva the 
advanced signals of icterus. I knew that that would 
wait a little, and anyhow none but the most urgent 
symptoms would have deterred me from giving him 
first a draught of my Broch-convoludetergent, or 
tongue-loosener, a compound I had evolved after 
much mental travail and experiment, with the deter- 
mination of breaking Mr. Emmons' shell of reticence 
at the first opportunity that offered. If "in silence 
there is wisdom," I had reflected, "there must be in 
Ret. Lone's system a mine of knowledgeous and- 
maximic wealth that is simply bonanzic." Here was 
my opportunity and I didn't propose to neglect it. 

So I said: "Mr. Emmons, your symptoms are so 
marked that I can not mistake your condition, I 
know exactly what you need." I then prepared him 
a dose of my soul unlocker and handing it to him, 
said: "Swallow this, please, as a preparative for 
the medicine I shall give you to take along." He 
did so, and I began busying myself in the prepara- 
tion of a jaundice mixture. I did not hurry for I 
wanted to give my medicine time to manifest itself. 
I had not long to wait, for suddenly Mr. Emmons 
said: "Doctor, will you please lock your door?" 



Tethered Truants. 83 

"Certainly," said I, "but why do you want me to 
do so?" 

"Because," said he, "I feel a sudden inspiration to 
talk; it is marvelous; I can't understand it, but I 
must talk or I shall die. If I had a hundred tongues 
I could work them all to the limit of their capacity. 
I want the door closed so that I may not be inter- 
rupted by incomers." 

Then followed a conversation that lasted an hour, 
he doing nearly all of the talking. His father had 
been a millionaire, had educated him at the best 
schools and had given him a fortune at the comple- 
tion of his collegiate course. He was polemic in his 
bent, and had a strong taste for political economy. 
Took the required course in law school and was 
admitted to the bar. After this, made a pleasure 
tour of the South. There he made the acquaintance 
of a most beautiful, amiable and cultured young lady, 
the daughter of an ex-slaveholder who was now 
comparatively poor. Acquaintance with the young 
lady grew into love, which was fully reciprocated. He 
was at this time thirty-two years old and it was now 
three years after the war. They were married, and 
for one month realized their wildest, sweetest dreams 
of human happiness. An election occurred. The 
father ol his bride was in sympathy with the polit- 
ical organization that had contributed most largely 
to the restitution of the union. As it happened, a 
number of his former slaves accompanied him to the 
polling place. It was inferred that they intended to 
attempt to vote. A row broke out just as they 
reached the voting place, and several shots were 



84 Tethered Truants. 

fired. Three were killed and a dozen wounded. 
Only one white man received a shot, Mr. Emmons' 
father-in-law. It killed him instantly. Upon receipt 
of the news, his daughter, Emmons' wife, fainted a 
number of times, lapsed into brain fever and died. 
Thus was he almost instantaneously plunged from 
the lovelit heights of sweet dreamery down into the 
black depths of hopelessness and woe. It nearly 
made a misanthrope of him. He was wretched and 
restless. Resolved to travel. Did so, visiting almost 
every part of the globe. Found a species of pleasure 
in the study of different forms of government, and 
the analysis ot political parties. Sojourned a con- 
siderable time in Australia where he studied their 
politics, and particularly their mode of voting. As 
time went on, retired more and more within himself, 
until finally it had become positively painful for him 
to hold any kind of intercourse with his fellowmen. 
Had written a brief sketch, in which he gives his 
conclusions as to the best form of government and 
the best mode of voting, etc. 

At this juncture I noticed a slight facial spasm, 
accompanied with a look of Avonderment and self- 
contempt, and he abruptly rose to depart. 

I attempted to renew our conversation, but he 
waved me off with imperious gentleness and a self- 
contained smile, and taking his hat and cane precip- 
itately departed. One month after this I was sum- 
moned in haste to his bedside. He had ruptured a 
blood vessel and was dying. He would not or could 
not talk, but succeeded in making me understand 
that he wanted something from his bureau drawer. 



Tethered Truants. 85 

It turned out to be the "sketch" he had referred to, 
and I was made to understand that he wished me to 
have it published m some noble work that would be 
read of all the world. I have carried out his wishes. 
The following is the sketch: 

THE VOTING SCHEME. 

Although I do not pretend to understand more than the 
rudiments of statesmanship, I beg to submit some conclusions 
bearing upon the fundamentals of politics which I venture to 
hope may at least amuse political dabblers. I do not claim 
originality, for "there is nothing new under the sun." Still I do 
not remember to have ever read or heard a discussion of the 
subject as it has presented itself to me. But if it has been dis- 
cussed publicly it was probably in a less refined age, when it 
struck men as a Utopian dream, without a single practical phase. 
I am persuaded that the model government of the world, our 
own, is on the verge of that sub-millennial epoch, of which the 
adoption of my plan or a similar one must constitute the master 
feature. I have traveled much and observed political conditions 
and effects closely, with the result of concluding, as a cosmopol- 
itan, not merely as an American, that our system of government 
is the best in the world. It is more closely in touch with the 
beneficent trend upon which the integrity and harmonious 
procession of the universe depends, than any other form of 
government on earth. This fact is secretly recognized by the 
most sagacious statesmen of even the most despotic govern- 
ments. It would be worth as much as their heads to advocate 
it, but it is a leaven which is doing an effective, if quiet work. 

All our political machinery needs, to be about perfect, is the 
adoption of a plan that will infallibly secure a full vote and fair 
count. That, I take it, is nearly axiomatic. We have, in many 
States, thanks considerably to the Knights of Labor organization, 
taken a great advance step in the right direction, by the adoption 
of the Australian secret voting method. It is only one more 
step from that to the method I have in mind, and that step is no 
longer than was the one from the old to the present secret mode. 
This is my plan: Abolish polling places altogether and substi- 
tute home voting. A moment's reflection will convince any 
sensible man that four-fifths of the degrading and dangerous 



86 Tethered Truants. 

features of our political methods depend upon the practices 
incident to voting places and election days. The plan I suggest 
would obviate all that. It would kill off intimidation at the 
polls with all its murderous and depraving results. It would 
put an end to buying and selling votes, with its ruinous moral 
effects. It would prevent importing, repeating, tissue-balloting 
and ballot-box stuffing. It would do away with the necessity 
for any man to lose a minute from his business or employment 
in order to vote. It would stop the extra amount of drunken- 
ness and quarreling pertaining to election places and days. It 
would secure the fullest vote possible and an absolutely fair 
count. It would make our elections pure, fair, quiet. 

I can only suggest generals; political experts could easily 
arrange particulars. Every voter should be required to register, 
whether in a city or hamlet. The registry officer, elected or 
appointed, should procure tickets, say thirty days before count- 
ing day. Voters could get their tickets at time of registering, or 
subsequently. Each registered man should be allowed but one 
ticket, for which he should sign a prepared receipt. A proper 
envelope would be furnished with the ballot, upon which the 
voter should write his name and address before leaving the 
registry office. He could prepare his ticket in the quiet of his 
own home, away from street influences and collar-pulling bums. 
A corps of ballot gatherers would collect and deliver tickets to 
the election judges, who would announce the name of voter, as 
now, remove ballot from envelope and drop it in ballot-box, as 
dow. Any person at residence of voter should be competent to 
hand the enveloped ballot to gatherer. 

This is an outline of the scheme that only lately completed 
its maturity in my mind. The ingenious can find many small 
objections to it, but with all that, I am sure it will commend 
itself to the candid and reflective, as feasible and to the last 
degree effective. God hasten the day, when some such improve- 
ment upon present methods shall become an accomplished fact. 

James Emmons. 

There you have Mr. Emmons' idea just as he ex- 
plains it himself. I am not capable of passing upon its 
merits, but I know many of my readers are. I con- 
fess it is rather new to me, but that has no significance, 
for many older political ideas would be new to me. 



Tethered Truants. 87 



TO BASSETT. 

O, Bassett! do you mind it yet — 

Remains there still a semblance, 
Or vision of my old sweet dream 

Locked up in your remembrance? 
Can you see me as then you saw — 

A stripling full of fancy, 
Careering through the dear delights 

Of Love's sweet necromancy? 

And can you see my Mary yet, 

Back through our tangled his'try, 
With eyes that shamed the tender skies, 

And hair, a golden mys'try — 
With throat as fair as lilies are, 

And cheeks like sunset tinted, 
And lips in which the ultimate 

Of all that's sweet was hinted? 

With form that was a sculptor's dream, 

Transformed into the real, 
And grace that realized the all 

Of grace in the ideal ; 
With mind that soared to mystic heights, 

Or flashed in sallies witty, 
And heart that compassed all the world 

In schemes of love and pity? 

And can you realize, just now, 

Through reminiscent glances, 
The sympathy you gave me when 

I swung through love's romances? 
How, like a courier of love, 

You waited on my pleasure, 
And carried missives back and forth 

For me, and for my Treasure? 



88 Tethered Truants. 

And, when at last God's angel came, 

And wooed away my fairy, 
And only left the fragrance of 

The memory of my Mary, 
Can you remember how your love, 

Forgetting and forsaking 
All else, fell o'er me like a prayer, 

And soothed my heart, while breaking? 

Dear playmate of the dim, sweet past, 

And friend through life's mutations, 
We're nearing now the brink that breaks 

Man's temporal relations; 
Oh, shall it be we'll meet again 

In some far realm of glory, 
Where doubts will clear, at last, and we 

Shall understand Life's storv? 



TO LAURIE. 



'An' winna let a bodv be. 



There is a lass I lo'e, Laurie, 

An' muckle like thysel' is she; 

Her image in my heart is shrined ; 

I canna keep it frae my mind- 
It winna let a body be. 

A seraph's form is hers, Laurie, 

An' dearer than the warP to me; 
Where e'er I gang, it haunts me still 
Like some sweet dream — an' aye it will, 
For 't winna let a body be. 

Ah, her cerulean een, Laurie, 

Reflect, wi' sweet fidelity, 
The motions of her spotless soul 
Without the let of her control— 

They winna let a body be. 



Tethered Truants. 

But oh, sic hair as hers, Laurie, 
We maun expect, perhaps, to see 

Float 'neath an angel's diadem, 

Outvying ilka precious gem — 
It winna let a body be. 

Her cheeks -her glowing cheeks, Laurie- 
Are tinted, as in Italy 
The radiant West is, when at eve, 
The sun has kissed her, ere his leave: 
They winna let a body be. 

Her cherub mou', alas! Laurie, 

What words shall paint the witcherie 
That charms us a' sae muckle, while 
It wreaths like light into a smile- 
On ! 't winna let a body be. 

An angel's glowing pen, Laurie, 
Dipped into tears of ecstasy, 

Might dwell in rapture on the bliss 

Her dewy lips yield in a kiss! 
Those lips that winna let me be. 

She is, indeed, to me, Laurie, 

An incarnate divinity, 
An' though presumptuously I err, 
My constant heart e'er throbs for her 

That winna let a body be. 

Perhaps you'd like to see, Laurie, 
The cause of my sweet agony; 
If so, some time just as you pass 
The mirror, please look in the glass- 
It winna ava lie to thee. 



89 



They wuz a little boy an' he would n't go to school, 
An' 'at there little boy, he grow'd up to be a fool; 
An' he had a little sister, and she would n't go, nuther, 
An' she grow'd up to be a fool badder 'an her brother ! 



90 Tethered Truants. 



THE SPRING. 

They's one p'ticler season, 'at 

Teetot'ly suits me best, 
In ever whichaway they is, 

'An any of the rest; 
An' 'at's the mornin' of the yur 

When ever blessed thing 
You see hez got a smile on hit — 

I mean the bloomin' Spring. 

Ole Naicher then, jes' seems to sorto 

Wake up, don't you know, 
An' kick the kiver off'n her — 

Her counterpane of snow— 
An' wash her face in Aprile showers, 

Which never fails to bring 
The beautifullest roses out, 

Onto the cheeks of Spring. 

An' nen she dresses in a frock 
Of sech a shade of green, 

As suits to her complexion, jes' 
The purtiest ever seen ; 

An' on her boozum, an' her brow, 
Wherever they will cling, 

She fastens jewels, which the same, 
Is wild flowers of the Spring. 

An' nen she primps before the skies, 

Ontel she's satisfied, 
Nen goes to flirtin' with ole Sol, 

Who ain't so occapied, 
But what he shines still brighter, ef 

They could be sech a thing, 
An' folds her in his arms, he does, 

An' kisses blushin' Spring! 



Tethered Truants. 91 

An' nen the two gits morried, an' 

The wildwood 'gins to ring 
With the music of the breezes, an' 

The birds, 'at sweetly sing, 
An' eyerthing is lovely, yes, 

Jes' ever, everthing, 
'Cause we're baskin' in the glory of 

The fresh an' bamray Spring! 



TIMES OF YUR. 

Speakin' 'bout the seasons of the yur, I want to say, 

'At 'taint so easy jes' to name the one you like the best, 
Fer tother beats the other one, in its p'ticler way, 
Ant's mighty puzzlin' to conclude which one suits you the 
best. 

Now, ther's the Spring; it's nice with all its buds an' birds, 

an' flowers, 

An' bees an' butterflies, an' breezy woods an' everthing; 

You purt-nigh think in rhymes, you do, through all its 

sunny hours — 

In fac' they hez ben poets, 'at writ verses 'bout the Spring. 

An' Summer— 'course it's hot ez blazes jes' when they's 
most to do; 
So hot you wusht a iceberg'd bust, and kivver you a half 
mile deep; 
But peas, airly taters, roast'n-yurs, tumattuses, an' fresh 
mushmillions too, 
They he'p to riconcile us to the sultriness a heap. 

The Fall's the favoritest time with some, an' I confess 

It's tol'ble hard to beat, with all its purty flamin' leaves 

An' purple an' yeller flowers, an' dreamy, hazy distances, 
An' blood-red sun-rise, an' sun-set, an' quiet, moonlit eves ; 



92 Tethered Truants. 

But Winter— a feller'd jedge, jes' on the jump, it hedn't no 

charms; 
But spellin' schools, an' candy pullins — two lasses to one 

lad— 
An' sleigh-rides with yer sweet-heart clostely snuggled in 

yer arms — 
I guess you'll hev to admit, ole Winter aint so tore-down bad. 

'T was in the Winter-time I met Samanthy, fer the fust, 
An' we conwerged into a focus — me'n 'at gyrl, on sight, 

So naicherly, I think the Winter beats the others wust, 
An' Smanthy'n me '11 git morried sure, 'f we're livin' 
nex' Christmas night. 



JIMSY." 



James Nolan — "Jimsy," as we called him — was a 
rarely peculiar man. I say was, because now he is 
dead. In his death he illustrated the danger of 
ultraidiosyncrasy, conjoined with snpersensibility. 
His moral nature was markedly dual, one element 
deriving its nutrition from unqualified adoration of 
the gentler sex, and the other from an intense sense 
of the ludicrous. 

Early in his life, it became a theory of his that 
women have no true wit sense. They laugh as 
heartily, and frequently as men do, but it is at edge- 
less, weak utterances and happenings, such as would 
not be noticed by a normal man. Monster, as Jimsy 
was in this respect, Avomankind never had a truer 
worshiper, and champion that he was, even while he 
still held to these foolish notions. I have seen him 
redden with indignation when some friend would 



Tethered Truants. 93 

speak lightly of woman's wit-lack. It was not a 
thing to be joked about — it was something to be 
mourned over. 

Jimsy was an effective humorist himself. So keen 
was his sense of the ludicrous, that he could bring 
into manifest existence, the potential puns of a 
liturgy. Imagine then how it galled him to see a 
brilliant sally fall flat on a dull ear! 

Bachelor-like, he was a student of woman nature 
— an unsuccessful one. He couldn't understand that 
woman's vast spiritual superiority over man, necessi- 
tates an inferiority to him in some other feature. He 
believed in the compensative principle in a theoretic 
way, but could not reconcile to his sense of right, 
the existence in woman of any phase marking a 
concession to man. " She is not his complement," he 
said — "she embodies human perfection in herself/* 

Under this conviction, he was driven to the con- 
clusion that wit either possesses a sex quality, or is 
something that detracts from a symmetrical moral 
whole. He couldn't entertain the former doctrine, 
and his idolatrous loyalty to woman, would not 
permit him to reject the latter. Under these con- 
ditions, at least one instance was made to exist, in 
which it was a calamity to be conscientious. 

Being most sensitively scrupulous, Jimsy necessa- 
rily fell into a lamentable mental state. Not being 
deaf, he could not help hearing witticisms, and face- 
tious "breaks" among men, and his power of self- 
repression was not always equal to the nearly resist- 
less force of his risible responsiveness. He would 



94 Tethered Truants. 

flee to the society of the ladies, and here his dutiful 
efforts to laugh at what made' them laugh, were 
solemn failures, and strained his expressive, as much 
as the other did his repressive energies. 

His health began to break, and feeling that some- 
thing must be done, he came to me for advice. I 
had been his physician, and friend for years, and he 
knew that he could depend upon my sincerity, at 
least. Not having had any conversation with him 
since his fall into the dreadful fallacy that entirely 
destroyed his peace, and was fast wrecking his 
health, I was not prepared to greet him suitably 
to his condition. 

So, as of old, I was joyously effusive, and in that 
rollicking, mannish abandon, which is, itself, humor, 
said: "Put it there, old boy," at the same time 
extending my hand. 

He did "put it there", but his hand trembled, and 
he seemed in distress. 

"What's the matter?" queried I, "you look a little 
thin?" 

"Ah" responded he in a laughably unlaughable 
tone — an exotic tone — "I feel thin," and then he 
looked self-condemned, for some reason. 

I understand the contagion, and bracing effects of 
cheeriness in the physician, and so, in a tone and 
manner full of mesmeric banter, said: "Tut, tut, 
Jimsy; I have seen persons suffering from excess of 
health, who were as thin as two of you." 

At this, he went into a species of convulsions, 
characterized by bursts of laughter that were sobs of 
grief! 



Tethered Iruants. 95 

"What's this?" I asked myself. "Was my attempt 
at drollery so doubtful, constructively, as to throw 
my sensitive friend into an erethism of paradoxy, or 
is his mind in a teetery condition?" One thing was 
certain, he needed a nerve sedative. I gave him a 
soothing draught, and as soon as he had regained his 
composure, signified in a merely friendly .way, my 
desire to hear what he -might wish to say. 

He then explained what a tussle in casuistry he 
had had, with the ultimate effect of settling him into 
the condition I have described. 

I attempted to protest, but he silenced me by 
saying that he had exhausted every phase of the 
subject, and was immovably fixed in his conclusions. 

"Do you hold that it is sinful to laugh?" I asked. 

"Not at all," he answered in dead earnest, "if you 
laugh at nothing, or at — the something that women 
laugh at. I am so disastrously masculine that I can 
not do either, therefore it is sinful for me to laugh at 
all. It is killing me, but I would rather die than 
outrage my conscience. What shall I do?" 

I am somewhat prolific in resource, and I deter- 
mined to find some way out of this difficulty for 
Jimsy, for I loved him dearly. I told him I would 
take the matter under serious consideration, and 
give him my conclusions, and advice on the morrow. 

Next day he was on hand at the appointed moment. 
The outcome of my reflections was that he must 
either go and live with the American Indians, who 
almost never laugh, or take up his abode on some 
island not inhabited by human beings (preferably 



96 Tethered Truants. 

one where monkeys dwelt, at whose antics he could 
innocently laugh), or else lie should marry some deaf 
and dumb girl and settle in some wilderness. 

The whole scheme struck him as so ludicrous, that 
he barely escaped another paradoxical fit. After his 
nerves steadied a little, he said with explosive sud- 
denness: tk I have it; I will marry some sensible 
Christian girl, and assimilate her in entirety." 

• I clapped- my hand on his shoulder in solemn 
approval, declaring at the same time that he had 
proven himself the better doctor of the two. 

Three months after this, I received an invitation 
to Jimsy's wedding. Amelia Wharton, a sweet little 
rose-bud of a girl, was to become his life partner. 
Demure, and given but little to boisterous laughing, 
she was, notwithstanding, a crystallized smile herself. 
He could not have made a better selection. 

The long looked for wedding night arrived at last. 
All must have responded to their invitations, for the 
Wharton mansion was tilled with guests long before 
the hour set for the ceremony. I had just finished 
my toilet for the occasion, when — it happened : that 
is the thing happened that never fails to happen to 
happen, with reference to the unhappy doctor: I was 
summoned peremptorily to see a tedious patient. 
My friend was to be married at seven, and it was 
past eight when I got back home. 

I had hardly gotten into my office when, the bell 
rang violently, and at the door I met a blanch-faced, 
white-lipped boy — Amelia's brother — who, in the 
incoherent language of vast scare, told me that 



Tethered Truants. 97 

something dreadful had happened to Jimsy — would 
I come instantly? 

I hurried to the Wharton mansion, where I found 
everybody in the wildest excitement. On the sofa 
lay the lifeless form of Jimsy. Whatever may have 
been his sufferings, they left no trace of it on his 
features. He lay, simply a picture of frozen placid- 
ity. His wife — poor widowed bride — was kneeling 
at the sofa, oblivious of everything in the great 
world, except her own absorbing grief, Others were 
bending over the corpse in curious distress, while 
several were condoling with the near relatives of the 
deceased. 

It was evident my medical services were not 
needed, so I retired to another room, where I hoped 
to learn of the guests the immediate history of the 
case. None of them, however, had noticed anything 
suggestive in the remotest degree of the cause of 
the man's sudden taking off I was in a painful 
quandary till I recollected that a reporter was pres- 
ent. "These fellows notice things," I reflected, and 
if he is still here, I mav s;et at the bottom of this 
matter. I found the pencil-fiend in a back room, 
humped up, and scribbling in a dead run, a peculiar 
light in his eye betraying the immense scoopiness of 
his feelings. 

"Pardon me" said I — "I should like to ask you a 
few questions." 

"Well, sir," — with ill-concealed impatience — "I 
hope you'll be brief. This copy must be in the 
printer's hands within an hour." 



08 Tethered Truants. 

"Did Nolan exhibit much trepidation during the 
marriage ceremony?" I asked. 

" Not much. His color came and went some, but 
he soon recovered his balance." 

"Was there any joking, or punning amongst the 
guests after the marriage?" queried I. 

"Yes, just a few minutes before Nolan's death, his 
best man got off a stunning pun: it was something 
about being kine(d) to calves." 

"Who laughed at it?" I asked, aware that I was 
making headway. 

"Everybody — that is (pausing) all the men." 

"Did you see Amelia at this juncture?" I asked 
with growing interest. 

"Yes—" 

"How did she look?" interrupted I. 

"Solemn." 

" Did you notice Nolan at the same time, and if so, 
how did he look?" 

"He greW : suddenly pale, and turned his back to 
the crowd. I noticed he staggered a little as he 
went to the table to get a drink of water." 

"Were there any witticisms, or was there any sharp 
repartee indulged in between this time, and his 
death?" I asked with some solicitude. 

"No, there was plenty of light pleasantry, but 
nothing approximating what could be called wit." 

"Nothing at all? please think," I said with grow- 
ing anxiety. 

"There was not a scintilla of wit, or anything like 



Tethered Truants. 99 

it, from the moment the cow pun was loosed, up to 
the fatal one of his death." 

"Well," said I in a sort of forlorn-hope spirit, 
" please tell me just what was said, or what happened 
immediately before Nolan died?" 

"Not a thing of the slightest consequence in the 
world. I recollect that Nellie Johnson, in attempt- 
ing to ask for her basket, made a lingual slip, and 
said: "Josie hand me that bisket (biscuit) where- 
upon all the women laughed consumedly. Amelia's 
voice rang out sweetly above all the rest. At this 
moment Nolan dropped like he had been shot. None 
of this, of course, can have any bearing upon the 
cause of his death?" 

" Certainly not," responded I, complacently. 

"By the way, Doctor" asked the reporter, "what 
do you think killed the man — heart disease?" 

"We'll have to call it that" answered I, and when 
I made out the death certificate the next day, I 
placed against, "Cause of Death," that doctor's 
happy hiding-place — that roomy ambiguity, "heart 
failure." 

Note. — I owe it to myself to say that I am not in doctrinal 
sympathy with the Nolan class of men. To believe as he did, is 
to be a crank, as his life and death illustrated. Have I not 
writhed under the rapier quip-thrusts of alert femininity a 
thousand times, and don't I know what it is to be the butt of 
their hurtling jokes? No. I have merely recorded this profes- 
sional experience to show what depths of fatuity are possibly 
attainable to a misguided, or lop-sided man. w. c. c. 



100 Tethered Truants. 

MEN HANK AW THE GYRLS. 

I'd know'd Hank Jones fer mighty nigh 'leven year, I guess, 

An' he was a kind of a rooster, which his socialness 

Jes' grow'd on you. The more acquainteder you got, 

The better you hed to like the feller, whether er not; 

An' hit seemed like he jes' naicherly tuck up with me 

Same's I did with him, tell at last, we got to be 

'Bout the clostest partners, I reckon you ever see. 

We both of us wuz jes' a turnin' twenty-one— 

Full of vinegar 'n pepper, an' alius keen fer fun ; 

No anxiety, 'cept worry in', you know, 

Over mustaches we didn't have, an' 'at wouldn't grow. 

An' 'bout this time, some new idees come into us — 

Same ez comes to all young fellers in this respect, 
An' place of taxin' our brains 'bout some new cussedness, 

We tuck to thinkin' a heap about the female sect. 
Got fixey an' proud-like, an' spent considable time on dress — 
Wore biled shirts with perfect ricklessness, 
An' clothes to match — standin' collars 'at mighty nigh 
Pried our years off, they wuz so stift an' high ; 
Cologned our hankerchers, an' soaked our hair with ile; 
In fac' done everthing 'at brung us up to style. 

We wuz purty brash, an fresh, same time perlite; 

Could talk soft trifles an' nonsense clean out'n sight, 

An' 'at made us popler— got bids to ever jamboree, 

An' stood right in with leaders of sassiety. 

It went on this-away fer a couple o' year er so, 

Us a runnin' with this gyrl er that, as suited our whims, you 

know, 
An' never settlin' down to airy a p'tickler gyrl, 
An' freezin' to her, zef she wuz the unly one in the worl'. 
But they wuz one gyrl 'at teetot'ly suited me - 
Fit me zef I wuz a hand, an' her a kid-glove, 
An' I wuz jes' crazy to git at her an' see 
Ef I couldn't maneuver-like, an' some-way win her love. 
Most cutest, an' sweetest gyrl, she wuz, oh, man! 
It didn't seem the worl' hild a ekal to Lizabeth Ann. 
An' the best of it wuz, she wuz Hank's sister, an this 



Tethered Truants. 101 

Made it double, fer he wuz clean gone on our Sis. 

Now Sis wan't no slouch, ez fer as piertness an' purtiness went, 
But she wuz zac'ly like Lizabeth Ann in one respect; 

They wuz the timidest, bashfullest gyrls in the settlement- 
Would n't hev nothin' to do with no boys, rickolect. 

Nuther of 'em went to parties very much, an' when they did, 

They went with other gyrls, er mebbe with some kid. 

Prehaps some of you kin rickollect the awful snow 

We hed in December of Seventy Two, an' how low 

The thenometer kep' fer a week? Well, Squire Wright, 

His gyrls gev a candy-pullin' 'at New-yurs night. 

We was all ast, an' ever one 'at could, you bet, 

Wuz boun' to go, fer they know'd 'tud be a reel banket. 

Them Wright gyrls never failed when 't come to sech ensuins 

Ez gittin' up a frolick, er any kind of party doins. 

The snow on a level, you rickollect, was two foot deep, 

An drifts 'long the road, 'at would make a reg'lar Laplander 

weep, 
An' cold— gee whizz! people, I aint no kind of liar, 
When I say 'tuz mighty nigh cold enough to freeze a fire. 
But what did we keer fer it, whuther 'twuz cold or hot? 
We'd went ef we'd know'd we'd froze to death, like ez not. 

When New Year's evenin' come 'round, I went to Sis an' said : 
" Goin' to the candy-pullin' tonight? " She shuck her head, 
An' ast ef I tuck her fer a gyraft. Sez she, 
"When hit comes to wadin' th'ough a two-foot snow, please 

excuse me." 
I laughed an' said: 

" I bet a dollar 'at you will go " 
She shuck her head agin. 

"What, ef I'm yer beau?" 
I never see a gyrl look more astonishter — 
"Honist," she said, an' they wuz a trimble in her voice, 
'At made me shamed fer heven' so often neglected her 
'Cause she wuz my sister, an' hed to be Hobson's choice. 
"Yes, Sis," sez I, "git on yer duds an' look yer best 
Yer ez good ez any, an' nairly ez purty ez the purtiest." 



102 Tethered Truants. 

I hitched up Nell to my bran' new sleigh, an' strung on her 
'Nough bells to laugh th'ough a mild of 'at keen atmospher, 
An' I putt in straw, 'n a buffalo robe, 'n a hot soap-stone, 
An' I felt like we wouldn't hev to knuckle to nairy one. 
Got Sis in, an' well wropped up, an' let Nell out. 
She felt her oats— Nell did — 'n I wish you mought 
A seen us skimmen over the snow, an' th'ough the night, 
Like some wild comet with bells on, a humpin' with all 
its might! 

When we got to the squire's we found 'at Hank hed brung 
Lizabeth Ann fer his gyrl, 'stid of C>nthy Jane McClung, 
Which he'd been goin' with her, same's me with Lida Dent, 
An' the guests looked mighty puzzled, and wonder'd what it 
meant. 

Durin' the evenin', I done my level best 

To shine up to Lizabeth Ann— twittered my purtiest, 

But it wan't no go. Still, I thought 'at I could see, 

'At sekertly she sorto hankered after me. 

I notus'd 'at Hank wuz tryin' to make a impression on Sis — 

She wuz shy, but pleased, I know'd, at them air breaks of his. 

Well, the party wuz a reel roar'n success, 
An' ever' one, 'cept Lide and Cinthy, wuz pleased I guess, 
An' when it busted, an' all the good-byes wuz said 'y jink 
The hour han' wuz pinten at four o'clock, I think. 

Hank's sleigh wuz jes' ahead of mine, an' he went flyin', 
But Nell wuz a racer, an' kep' closte up 'thout much tryin', 
An' the gyrls wuz proud an' happy, an' thought of the differ- 
ence 
'Tween brothers 'at don't 'n 'at does give ther sisters prifer- 
ence. 

We hedn't got more'n half a mild, when Hanks sleigh got 
In a rut, an' mine done the same, an' both o' them upsot, 
An' th'ow'd us permiscus down a bank in a drift of snow, 
'At wuz forty foot deep, ef 'twuz half a inch, I know. 
Sech a tangled mess of humans, I bet you never see, 
An' sech scramblin' — beat a circus fer variety. 



Tethered Truants. 103 

Hank fished out Lizabeth Ann, an' got his sleigh all right, 

An' putt her in, an' 'fore we know'd it wuz out'n sight. 

It tuck me longer, some-way, but in a leetle while 

Me'n Sis wuz snuggled in, in a satisfact'ry style, 

An' Nell wuz splittin' the air, an' the tinglin' jinglin' bells 

Wuz ticklin' the little echoes of them there hills and dells, 

An' the little stars wuz splinterin' the breath of the frosty 

night 
With messages of glory from their awful height. 
"Hain't you might'-nigh frozed?" says I. "Lemme make you 

warm." 
Nen I perceeded to wrop her up with — my arm. 
She trimbled a little, but sot still. 'N I said, " Sis, 
Yer's to Hank," nen I kissed her a affectionate kiss! 
She squirmed a leetle, 'n I said: "Sis, I reely spec' 
The reason you don't talk, yer thinkin' 'bout the wreck." 
Nen she said: '"At wuz the onriest, scheminist plan 
They ever wuz." 

"Why, Goramighty! 'at you, Lizabeth Ann?" 
Says I, 'stonished most to death. 

"You know'd 'twuz me 
All along, an' you an' Hank orto both of you be 
Shamed yer selves fer playin' sech a trick." Nen I 
Jeo' bust out laughin', an' laughed, an' laughed, tell I thought 

I'd die. 
I guess 'twuz ketchin,' fer Lizabeth Ann jined in an' her 
Sweet voice rung out in silver tribble more charminer 
To me an' all the other music in the worl'. 
Oh, Gee! but wuzn't I happy, with that darlin' gyrl 
Closte to my side, an' not tryin' to hide no more 
Her likin' fer me ? The ice wuz broke at last fer shore, 
An' I know'd 'tud be all right. 

After a bit she said: 
" I wonder how Hank an' Sis, by now, is comin' ahead?" 
" They'll git along all right," says I, "both o' them is true, 
But I caint think of nothin' in all this worl' but you — 
We're purty nigh home, though I tuck the very longest road ; 
Lord, how time flies— we'll hev to part, my angel toad! " 
I kissed her an' he'ped her out, nen kissed her agin, an' said: 
"Shill I call nex' Sunday night?" She smiled an' nodded her 

head. 



104 Tethered Truants. 

When I got home, Sis hedn't yit got off her wraps. 

Laughin' and blushin' an' shakin' her finger, she said: "Pre- 

haps 
You fellers thought you wuz smart. Why, me'n Lizabeth 

Ann 
Wuz onto yer trick a week ago. Overheer'd you plan 
The thing, I did, nen I posted her." 

Well, I wuz beat. 
But to cut the story short, er I might say short an' sweet, 
They wuz a double weddin,' one yur from 'at air night, 
An we wuz in it. We're in't yit, yer mighty right. 



ATHEISM. 



It is easily possible for an independent thinker to 
reason himself into confessed atheism. In fact, to 
one who is untethered by any feature of creedal 
theology, and who is brave to a point which includes 
self-contempt, it is nearly as easy not to believe in, 
as to believe in, God. The habit of exactitude 
acquired by all thinkers and reasoners, tends to ques- 
tion of the unprovable. The extrascriptural pro's 
and con's in relation to the Deiilc possibility, are 
found to be nearly in precise equipoise. Why should 
God thus hide Himself from our hungry, inquiring 
minds? Alas, for atheistic philosophy, why should 
our souls be thus hungry and yearning ? It does not 
answer the question to say this yearning was not 
primarily innate, but is inherited; that in the world's 
youth the death-bed agony was supplied this pallia- 
tive by the hopeless pity and love of dear ones, for 



Tethered Truants. 105 

the possibility of the comforting suggestion grew out 
of a sense of oughtness in relation to this terrible 
mustness. Whence this sense of oughtness? We 
know now that in reference to forces and conditions 
in their relation to the cosmos, oughtness and mustness 
are identical. Death is inevitable — it must be, and 
since it ought to be offset by the fact of a Supreme 
Fatherhood, it is so counterbalanced, because the 
ought and the must are one and the same thing in the 
end. 

No one can be absolutely atheistic, without confess- 
ing that a stream may rise higher than its source, 
which is as absurd as that there could be adjoining 
hills without hollows between them. To say that 
mind can be evolved from dumb matter, is to hold 
that something can come from nothing; either this, 
or to deny that matter is dumb, which, traced to the 
end, is an acknowledgment of God. 

Every integral part of this universe has a head. 
This is the bare statement ot an undisputed fact — 
it is something more conclusive than an axiom, 
if possible. Even unorganized, amorphous matter 
depends upon something — its origin, its head. Noth- 
ing that ever existed did have, and nothing that 
exists does have, two heads.* This, of course, is 
past debate. All these sub-heads, which are neces- 
sary to the integrality of Nature's parts, focus in the 



*Let not some trifler instance a barrel, for its ends are heads 
by philological courtesy only. Its head is that capital function to 
which all its other functions are subservient. 



106 Tethered Truants. 

Supreme — in the Head of all heads. Call this primal 
condition Nature, if you will, but don't deny its 
intelligence, for in doing so you are denying that you 
have a mind, which is to do an impossible thing, 
since the possibility of denial inheres in your power 
to think. 

Thus, we have seen, that to be self-consistent, the 
universe must have a head. Not to be self-consistent 
is not to exist, but we know the universe does exist, 
therefore, it has a head. Man is not its head. I 
actually make this statement fearlessly. No lesser 
being than man is its head. We have seen the 
impossibility of a sane position counter to this. It 
is an inescapable conclusion therefore, that the head 
of the universe is an intelligence superior to man's. 
In this connection it is proper to remind the extreme 
doubter that the fact of supremacy, must include a 
knowledge of the fact, otherwise, it could not be 
such fact. Is any sane man conscious of being the 
Supreme Being ? 

To admit the possibility of higher intelligences, is 
to admit the fact of a Supreme Intelligence, distinct 
from man, for the possibility of higher, includes the 
fact of highest. There is a God ! 



There was a ycung man named McToot, 
Who was kissingly pressing his suit, 

When the gov'ner broke in 

With a crash r.nd a din, 
And lifted him out with his boot. 



Tethered Truants. ,107 



WAIL OF THE AGNOSTIC. 

I've studied hard the wrangling creeds 

In search of ray divine, 
To light my soul in its great needs, 

Through this dark night of mine; 
But what is truth — truth doubtlessly — 
Hath ne'er declared itself to me. 
How favored — ah, how blessed they 
Who see, and know the radiant way 
"To mansions in the skies." Could I 
See thus, know thus, 'twere sweet to die. 
Transcending reason, sainthood knows 

By faith God reigns above — 
Transcending faith, the atheist shows 

By reason 'twill not prove. 
Between this bright and dark extreme, 
Vast hosts still halt, and dread, and dream, 
And 'mid this speculative throng 
I drift all helplessly along. 
If a man die, oh! shall he then 
Miraculously live again? 
The Christian knows this will be so, 
But I — I do not, can not know ! 



108. • Tethered TruanU 



BILL AKD SERAFENER, 



L jes don't hisitate to say, at feeraiener Hanks 

Prehaps, without no doubt, was plum the purtiest, likeliest 

gyr 1 
At ever trompt round on them air dear ole Masseppi banks, 
Er in Mizzury, er fer that air matter, in the worl'. 



Bill Scroggins, which he lived in Eelinoy, he thought so too, 
An pushed his-self almighty brash to bring her to the scratch, 

An' she swung in, fer he jes' suited her clean th'ough an' 
th'ough, 
An' hit got middlin certain, 'at these two would make a match. 

Now Bill, he warn't no jude, an' didn't talk no college words, 
But he could sling a awful vicious axe, er break a colt, 

Er train coon dogs, er trap a fox, er any kind of birds, 
An' no man beat him pitchin' quaits, he ever got aholt. 

But spite of all these 'complishments, ole Hanks jes' hated him — 
Driv him off' n his place one day, he did, an' senchly swore 

Bill's chainces fer him keepin' of a whole hide would be slim, 
'Fever he ketched him prowlin'roun'them diggins anymore. 

An' Bill kep' scace, fer ole Hanks wuz a terror in a fight; 

No how, Bill didn't want no scrap fer Serafener's sake, 
So him an' the gyrl kep'hopin' 'at, somehow, 'tud all come right, 

'Thout no punchin' heads er furse in any which-away. 

The more time flitter'd by 'thout Bill, the more deestressed she 
grow'd, 

An' twict she tried fer to alope, but ole Hanks headed her; 
Tell she jes' settled down heartbroke at last, crusht by her load, 

An' day by day, she grow'd more slimmer an' more solemner. 



Tethered Truants. 109 

One lonely evenin' she wuz out a milkin' of a keow, 

When all a suddent, a cycalone jes' swup 'em out'n sight! 

Oh prosterated wuz that pore fambly with grief, an' now, 

Rough as he wuz, ole Hanks would died to hed her back that 
night. 

Fer three days they wuz searchin'an' inquirin' fer milds aroun' — 
The neighbors all turned out an' he'pd,but it wuz all in vain; 

No doubt they'd drapped in Massasep, an' never would be foun' 
Tell jedgment day, when all the scraps is jined together 
again. 

Ole Hanks, he tuck a pious turn, an' said at they mus' be 

Some funeral doins, religious-like; readin' the scripter some, 

Er takin' up a cleckshion er a singin' doxol'gy, 

An' he sot Chuesday night, an' ast the good people to come. 

An' they did come, an' Deacon Wiles hed jes' commenced to read, 
When all a-suddent the door bust in, an' who do you think 
stood there? 

Bill and Serafine! an' she said: "We've tuck an' done the deed — 
Fergive, an' bless us Pap — make this our weddin' infaair!" 

Ole Hanks, he blowed his nose, he did, an' tickled us mos' to 
death 
By sayin': "Prov'dence got low holts on me, an' I'm plum 
beat — 
I see you brung a fiddler — when we all kin git our breath, 

We'll clair the floor, an' dance the chune called ' Bonypart's 
Retreat.'" 

The cycalone 'thout hurtin' 'em, hed gently sot 'em down, 

In Eelinoy, right in Bill's yard, an' 'twasn't long ontel 
Bill 'skiver'd 'em, an' soon the 'squire hed did the thing up 
brown; 
An' 'at's how it come, this purty bride — danced at her own 
funerel. 



no Tethered Truants. 

MARVELS OF THE UNSEED. 

Day by clay and more and more we are made to 
realize that there is no void in the universe. All that 
is, is material expression. Every forward hitch of 
science is toward this conclusion as its ultimate 
resting place. This material theory will certainly, 
probably or possibly account for all known phe- 
nomena. Standard philosophy fails us miserably in 
our greatest exigencies. 

All occult manifestation depends proximately upon 
vibration : remotely upon the fact of universal sub- 
stantiality. The consensus of all modern scientific 
thought points to vibration as the immediate cause 
of every observed effect. But vibration is possible 
to substance only. Vacuity — abstraction — can not 
vibrate. 

In that class of phenomena affecting psychic man- 
ifestation, the will — itself an effect of vibration — is 
the central element. Thus hypnotism — dependent 
upon psychic telegraphy, which depends upon the 
eye's substantiality — is a will result. If will power 
were abstraction, as held in the past, how could it do 
things, remembering that abstraction (nothing) can- 
not act or be acted upon? To illustrate the weak- 
ness and fallacy of current philosophy I will here 
quote from a paper of mine published some time ago 
in the Arena. 

Thus: " Grief is denned as pain of mind, which 
is unwittingly nearly correct. But pain and mind are 
both abstraction. Abstraction, under final analysis 



Tethered Truants. ill 

is nothing. Therefore grief is a form of illusion 
and can have no real existence. When, then, a fond 
mother or wife drops dead from a grief-shock, she 
does no such thing, for abstraction cannot act, nor 
be acted upon — she dies of illusion. But this illusion 
is, itself, abstraction, and since abstraction cannot 
act, she does not die of illusion ; she just dies any- 
how! But she could not die without a cause, and. 
since the only possible cause is not a cause, the con- 
clusion is inevitable that although she is undeniably 
dead, she positively did not die! ' Moo Je-of '-motion' 
philosophy for you, dear reader." 

As nature gives up her secrets under the curious 
delvings of man, and particularly under those of the 
chemist, the truth of this Higher Philosophy upon 
which I insist, will become more and more evident. 
The mystery of photography in darkness, and that 
surrounding the x-ray, can be explained by no other 
theory under heaven. Particular forms or qualities 
of matter depend upon atomic relationships, and 
these depend upon rate of energetic expression. The 
difference between what we call light and darkness 
depends proximately upon the relationship of their 
ultimate molecular elements and their intrinsic move- 
ments, and all this is an effect of energetic rate. 
Energy is matter, which may be gross or refined 
according to the degrees of its arrest. The phe- 
nomena of energy, upon which every manifestation 
depends, result from the beneficence of the primal, 
supreme, causeless cause. 



112 Tethered Truants. 

These conclusions agree, in the main, with those 
of our greatest modern philopher, John Uri Lloyd. 

It has been scientifically fashionable to consider 
darkness as a negative condition. It has been de- 
fined to be "the absence of light." There are no 
negative conditions in the universe, because self con- 
tradiction is impossible. The term "negative" is 
technically convenient, that is all. Everything that 
exists is a positive expression. Darkness is just 
another form of light, as char-coal is another form 
of the diamond. The facts of light and darkness, 
as related to us, are consequent upon the structure of 
the eye, and the existence of a sensorium. Whether 
considered objectively or subjectively, they, in com- 
mon with every other phenomenon, are physical con- 
ditions. Potentially, the Roentgen ray has always 
existed. By a fortuitous movement in connection 
with a kindred purposive act, the potential was 
energized into the kinetic. And so, as the moments 
are told, we are forging toward the ultimate con- 
summation ot the final in tact, though we shall 
never reach it. Nothing is impossible that the mind 
can conceive. Otherwise, reciprocal harmony be- 
tween potentiality and mental perceptiveness would 
be destroyed, which would be self-stultification in 
nature. The fact of a possible conception, is the 
fact of its possible justification. To deny this is to 
doubt the philosophy of analogy, and question the 
infinitude of the unconditioned. 

Everything that exists is a form of thought. He 
who first said: "There is a thought behind every- 



Tethered Truants. 113 

thing," closely grazed the actual truth. It is true 
that there are sermons in stones. Things are not the 
objective products of thought — they are its potential 
expressions. Between manifest and potential thought 
there is an eternal play, resulting in a ceaseless train 
of influences and effluences. Kinetic thought goes 
from man into his productions where it appears in 
potential form. Potential thought passes into the 
human mind in kinetic form, obediently to a primal 
fiat. Thus man converses with God, and God with 
man. 

We are living in a tensive era. Man and his 
environments are getting closer together as the clock 
ticks. Electricity and magnetism, in conjunction 
with chemical outreachings, are solving the mystery 
of being. The direct and indirect expressions, or 
effluences of the unconditioned are converging to- 
ward a common center. The impossible of the past 
is rapidly becoming the possible of the present — the 
impossible of the present shall be the possible of the 
future. Blessed is he who lives now — more blessed 
he who is not vet born. 



RHYMIC JIM-JAMS. 

The buggest bug that bugs 
Is the spraddling beetle bug, 

And the sluggest slug that slugs 
Is the common " worter slug." 

(To be continued.) 



114 Tethered Truants. 



SETH SMITH 

Onct they wuz a man by the name of Smith- 
Easiest man in the worF to be 'quainted with — 
Which he wuz a fisherman, livin' not fer 
Frum the willery banks of the Miainer. 
He want no kind of a restocrat— 
Couldn't talk college, an' things like that, 
An' he dressed in a ruther keerless style — 
Barefoot in summer, all the while; 
Blue-drill pants, an' a hick'ry shirt 
Kiver'd with fish-scales and other dirt; 
Permeter hat, 'thout much of a -brim, 
An' on'y one gallus — 'at wuz 'nough fer him, 
But him an' his wife, an' the two twin kids 
Wuz ez happy ez a nest of katydids 
Ez long ez the river didn't git too high, 
An' the fish ud bite, an' the people ud buy. 

Now Seth fer 'at wuz his gyven name— 
Wuz rough in his ways, but all the same 
His heart wuz soft ez a womern's, an' he 
Wuz the cleverest feller you ever see — 
Lend you all he hed 'thout a bit o' quizzin', 
'Cept his wife prehaps, an' them twins o' his'n. 
Jes' 'commodate anyone, no odds who, 
An' no differnce what they ast him to do; 
Ef he'd owned a planet, an' you'd wanted hit, 
He'd a give it up 'thout parley'n a bit. 
W'y hit's a ackshal fac', fore now, I've see 
Him reach down his pocket delibetly, 
An' fetch up the las' chaw tobacker he had 
To give to a tromp, er some'n ez bad! 
Didn't keer fer his-self not a fiddler's durn, 
But ud resk his life to do a good turn 
Fer ez ornery a thing ez a worter-slug, 
Er mebbe a crippled tumble-bug; 
'At's the kind of a feller 'at Seth Smith wur— 
11 Fisherman Smith, of the Miamer." 



Tethered Truants. 115 

Squire Brown, which he lived in a town closte by, 

In a stone-front house three story high, 

Wuz the richest man fer milds around, 

An' 'bout the proudest 'at could be found. 

Same time, no man in the town done more 

To sarve the public an' he'p the pore, 

An' mebbe tuz owin' to 'at there naicher 

'At he alius got to the legislaicher, 

Fer regler ez 'lection-time come by 

We sent him up, like a ball on a fly. 

The squire wuz a widderwer, an' he 

Hed jes' one kid— a gyrl — an' she 

Wuz nine year old, an' ez sweet a child 

Ez you'd meet, ef you'd go a thousan' mild. 

A borned angel, she wuz complete, 

An' he worshiped the very tracks of her feet. 

One day in Aprile of ninety-four — 

I'll never fergit it, not no more 

An' I'll disremember to breathe my breath, 

Er say my prayers at the pint of death — 

The squire tuck his gyrl out fer a ride, 

An' to visit her cousins on the other side 

Of the river, 'bout ten milds away, 

Where they cackalated to spend the day. 

Ez they passed Seth, fishin' closte to the ford, 

The squire gev a nod, an' a friendly word, 

An' the little gyrl th'owed a kiss at Seth, 

At might-nigh tuck away his breath, 

Fer he loved childern, good er bad, 

With all the great big heart he had. 

'Bout four o'clock in the afternoon, 
A black cloud riz, an' purty soon 
It busted, an' the rain begun to pour, 
An' hit kep' hit up fer a hour er more, 
Tell all the cricks of everwhere 
Fer milds around got on a tear, 
An' naicherly 'twant long ontel 
The river itself begun to swell. 



116 Tethered Truants. 

Tuz half past six when Squire Brown 

Come drivin' back on his way to town; 

Hit hedn't rained on'y a leetle bit 

Where he'd been visitin, an' hit 

Plum fooled him. Didn't seem which 

The river'd raised more'n a foot er sich, 

An' he druv right in: Seth hed'nt no doubt 

The squire'd come home by nuther rout, 

An' he'd went dip-nettin' furder down, 

An' clean fergot 'bout Squire Brown, 

But the very minute he heer'd the splash 

He know'd what wuz up, an' flew like a flash 

To the ford. The buggy'd upsot, an' the hoss 

Wuz plungin', an' strugglin' to git across, 

An' the squire wuz ketched in a floatin' limb, 

Which 'at wuz lucky, fer he couldn't swim. 

An' the little gyrl— dear little gyrl— 

She wuz carried down in the maddenin' whirl 

To the suck below, an' a flash of the gold 

Of her wonderful hair too plainly told 

Where the flood hed swaller'd her up ! Now Seth 

Know'd well tuz almost certain death 

To dive in 'at place, but what wuz Seth 

To Seth? an' what did he keer fer death ! 

So whisperin' a prayer, he made the dive, 

Boun' fer to git her, dead er alive. 

An' he got her too, an' brung her to shore, 

An' nen he dropped, an' didn't know no more, 

Fer he'd left a path of red in the flood— 

The red of a hero's noble blood. 

When he div, he struck a rock with his head, 

An' "fractured skull" 's what the doctor said, 

Soon's he wuz th'ough examinin' him ! 

The chainces fer the gyrl likewise looked slim, 

But they brought her to, an' she soon got well, 

An' now comes the part 'at is hardest to tell. 

Poor Seth kept sinkin' ez the days rolled by, 

Tell we all of us know'd 'at he hed to die. 

He wuz out'n his head frum the minute he dropped 



Tethered Truants. 11; 

On^the shore. His reasonin' idees wuz stopped, 
But he talked all the time in a staggerin' way 
'Bout his wife, an' the twins ; tell, one bright day, 
His mind waked up, an' wuz clair ez a bell, 
An' he 'pear'd to know 'at he couldn't git well, 
Fer he said to the squire: "I don't keer fer my lite, 
But what will become of my pore little wife, 
An' two twin kids?" He breshed 'way a tear 
The squire did, an' said : "Dear friend, I shill keer 
Fer your darlin's, the same ez I'll keer fer my own," 
An' stnilin' his thanks, Seth died 'thout a groan. 

The squire hed anxiously w r atched over Seth 

Frum the day he wuz hurt, tell the day of his death — 

<3rot a doctor an' nuss, an' done all of the good 

In the worl' fer the man 'at he possible could, 

An' after he died, he hed him bestow'd 

In a way tu'd make any corpse proud, ef it know'd. 

Tuck his wife an' the kids, ez quick ez they come 

Frum the fun'rel, straight to his own palace home. 

Drest 'em up in the finest of close — went so fer 

Ez to hire a maid, an' a private tuter, 

He did, fer the widder. More'n 'at, tuck an' went 

An' hed her take lessons on the pian'r inst'ment. 

Made a heap o' talk - all this did. Folks tuck an' said 

'At hit looked like both wuz glad Seth wuz dead, 

An' all sech ez 'at. Kep' hit up this away 

Fer more'n three year, squire did, 'n one day 

Tuz 'nounced 'at they'd soon be a w T eddin' in town— 

The morriage in fac', of the widder'n Squire Brown ! 

Hit's all over now, an' the new Mrs. Brown, 

An' the twins, is the happiest people in town. 

'Nef Seth Smith's naicher hain't changed sence he died, 

An' things kin be seen frum the other side, 

I knoiv 'at nothin' could be truer, instid — 

Seth's glad he is dead, an' died ez he did. 



118 Tethered Truants. 



JINGO. 

There's a little old-fashioned song I know, 
That was born in the turbulent long ago, 
And a certain italic burns through its notes 
That splendidly fits it for patriot throats; 
'Tis "Yankee Doodle," with its bounding sing-ho 
And nervy Jingo! 

There's a bird with a flashing and far-reaching eye,. 
That skims, in its glory, the uttermost sky; 
Our emblem of freedom, it typifies well 
Our Uncle, the shrewd and the vast Samuel, 
And its scream, unlike that of the timid flamingo, 
Is straight-out Jingo! 

And there is a banner, "Oh, long may it wave 

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave, 

Whose right to its beautiful starry array 

Was wrung out of blood; and it has a way 

Of making the despots and tyrants sing low, 

And small, by Jingo! 

And there is a day that we all celebrate, 
In every hamlet of every State; 
'Tis the Fourth, Columbia's glorious day! 
And damned be the man who won't hooray, 
And whoop up its noise and spread-eagle lingo, 
By the eternal Jingo! 



Tethered Truants. 119 

FINITE, VS. INFINITE LOGIC. 

It is a dazing fact, that it is as impossible to con- 
ceive that the Universe has always existed, as it is, 
that it had a beginning. That it never had a begin- 
ning is finitely unthinkable. That it had a beginning 
is equally so, because this position involves the idea of 
creating something out of nothing. If the Universe 
has always existed, then it is an effect without a 
cause ; if it was created, then its creator is an effect 
without a cause. Both these hypotheses are equally 
untenable according to human logic, yet we do know, 
if we know anything, that one of them is true. Since 
one of them is necessarily true, this truth must be in 
harmony with a logic which is inaccessible to human 
reason, for it could not exist in self-contradiction. 
That is to say, to us it could not so exist. 

Any attempt to fathom the infinite leads up to the 
seeming mergence of the possible and the impossible, 
as seen trom a finite standpoint. Thus, to us, the 
nature of duration is such that it cannot be antici- 
pated. Since it never had a beginning, it may be 
likened to a straight line with but one end. The 
present represents that end. Such a line cannot 
exist, but we are forced to acknowledge that it does 
exist. As this line is lengthening toward a futurity 
which has no limit, it appears that it will always be 
a line with but one end. Thus, it is a part of infin- 
ity, but infinity can have no parts. As the whole 
necessarily implies boundary, or limitation, infinity 
can have no whole- If it has neither whole, nor 



120 Tethered Truants. 

parts, our reason crowds it out of existence. Since 
the finite depends upon the infinite for its possibility, 
then the finite does not exist. If neither the finite 
nor infinite exists, then nothing exists. 

Thus, it is seen that under a rigorous application 
of human reasoning to the solution of the problem 
of the infinite, it is established, under final analysis, 
that cause and effect are identical ; that what cannot 
exist does exist ; that existence, and nonexistence are 
one and the same thing. To state it succinctly the 
impossible is possible, and the possible is impossible, 
and we ourselves do not live and move, and have our 
being ; and so it is that we are hurled back into our 
puny selves, when we essay to fathom the unfathom- 
able. 



SAVED. 



Oh! I loved her so, and it seemed she must 

Love me. The compensative scheme would else 

Be violate and there would be a jar 

Throughout the universe. Why should my heart 

Go out to her in adoration deep 

Not bidden by a psychic effluence 

That sought response? I reasoned so, just as 

I'd ravel out cold science when I'd find 

A philosophic point. Poor blinded fool— 

I knew not that the heart's philosophy 

Is bounded by no laws which merely man 

Can comprehend, till Ethel taught it me. 

She loved me not, but pitied tenderly 

My helplessness, and held me in her sweet 

Esteem. That was so much, and since her hate 

Could not have killed my love, for both of us, 

'Twas better so. 



Tethered Truants. 121 

But there came one whom she 
Could love— a stranger from a foreign land— 
A Count they said, who, tired of courts and all 
Their hollow mockery, sought rest amongst 
Our unpretentious villagers. His face 
Had strength enough to hide from partial eyes 
The lines which mean duplicity throws out, 
(Had there been any need for any such deceit) 
And all agreed that he was handsome to 
A rare degree. His mien was noble, and 
His ease in quotings personal to lords 
And men of royal fame, invested him 
With a distinguished aura, which failed not 
In most potential awesomeness. And yet 
With easy dignity he'd stoop to talk 
With simple folk, and being born to all 
The sweet amenities he gave to them 
No choice, but they should love and reverence 
The stranger Count, 

And there ensued within 
Our social realm, a nutter such as ne'er 
Had been before. The maidens, nearly all, 
Vied with each other in a charm-display 
To win the Count's esteem, which might lead on, 
Through fav'ring circumstance, to love. And the 
Mamma's, with more matured finesse, and with 
A deep forecast, begotten of the past, 
Abetted well the charmers in their schemes. 
Soirees succeeded in a glitt'ring chain, 
And he, the favored guest, was made to taste 
To full, the sweet of compliment, not less 
Effusive than he'd fled from, if 'twas more 
Sincere. 'Twas his to choose, like any bee 
That staggers through a garden full of rare 
Sweet flowers. All this for him, while local beaux 
Cursed sotto voce, misinterpreting 
The animus at bottom of this craze, 
As woman's shallowness, as if they had 
Not lost their heads, had some sweet princess dropped 
As he, into their midst. 



122 Tethered Truants. 

Time sped on wings 
That whirred to music and to laughter for 
That happy throng, the sobbing undertones 
All lost to them, but not to me. 'Twas plain 
Anon he had his preference. If he 
Had been an anchorite, he ne'er could have 
Withstood my Ethel's charms. 

Her form was that 
In fervent real, which e'er haunts the dreams 
Of sculptors, and her hair, a cataract 
Of sunset gold. Her brow, the trysting place 
Of thought; her eyes and cheeks and lips and throat, 
The dreams of poets crystallized. Each glance, 
Each blush and all her smiles, were glints of news 
From heaven, and her ardent soul was the 
Sweet nesting place of love. The tender light 
Of pity and half-love which ever shone 
For me from her dear eyes, grew more and more 
In precious worth as she, by pauseless Fate 
Was borne out from my sphere of hope. 

The Count 
Had but to choose, and Ethel was his choice. 
Her love was ready-made for him, and as 
The sweet of sunlight is, by beck'ning fruit 
Absorbed, so was my idol's life immerged 
In his. Now, was it weak in her to be 
Thus chosen, like the bloodless diamond in 
A cluster that's for sale? Or did her sense 
Of her compelling beauty make her feel 
A mistress-ship consistent with her case? 
The casuistry of the heart I leave 
To cooler heads; I only know that she 
Could not do wrong. 

So happy in her faith 
And hope and love, and new-found joy, the slights 
Of envious and disappointed ones 
She easily condoned, and truly wished 
The lines of all might fall as pleasantly 
As had her own. 



Tethered Truants. 125 

The visits of the Count 
Grew frequenter, and it was known they were 
Engaged. In one more happy week, this twain 
Were to be one. Already they were joined 
In that wedlock of souls which is above 
Convention and statutes. He told her so, 
And her true heart, in trust that's measureless, 
Beat echoes to the same. The logic of 
Her heart was right, for she could not, in her 
Essential purity, do wrong. Mistakes 
That bear directly into grossest sin 
May be, consistently with right intent. 
And doubly, so may be, if possible, 
With innocence that thinks no wrong 

The knell 
Of all my glowing hopes was tolling still, 
But made me not a misanthrope. Who loves 
One worthily, can not be pessimist, 
Nor hate the world. 'Twas mine to minister 
To suff'ring ones; to 'suage the ills of flesh, 
And oft concomitantly to give sooth 
To breaking hearts. This, too, was constant help 
In crushing self and climbing toward that plane 
Where good, ideal, melts at last into 
The real. So I plodded on, like all 
The village doctors do, forced into deep 
Relation to poor human nature's dark 
Obverse, yet catching oft bright glimpses of 
The streak divine, in souls we think forgot 
Of God. Meantime, my money income through 
It all, showed cents for dollars earned- the rule 
With such as I. 

As, hurrying along 
One bitter morn to see a child with gripes, 
The squire's wife, a newsy little soul, 
Called me to halt, and with a relish I 
Was sorry for, said, bantering: 

" You have 
Not heard the news?" 



124 Tethered Truants. 

k 'The news? what news?" said I, 
"Some lover-pair eloped?" 

"Oh! better far— 
I mean, more startling far, than that — the Count 4 * 
Has fled!" 

My heart stopped beating and I felt 
I'd surely fall, but automatic'ly 
I walked away, an4 rallied slowly as 
I went. " Dear girl," I mused, " her faithful heart 
Is broken now, and she will die. Those eyes 
Which drops of joy alone should gem, must now 
Grow dull with grief. Those cheeks, the sweet play- 
ground 
Of chasing blushes, soon will fade into 
Blank pallor, and the lips, the cherry lips 
Where kisses bud, grow white, and lose their taste 
Of ecstasy ! " And musing thus, I flew 
To her to give such comfort as a friend — 
A lover-friend — might give. 

Alone, with eyes 
All dry, but on her face a set resolve 
That reached from hell to heaven, I found her there, 
My Ethel, with her fatal wound. A light. 
The shadow of her old-time smile, broke out, 
As taking both my hands she said : " Welcome ! 
For all my faith in man is not destroyed." 
Then pleadingly : "Oh ! you will be to me 
A proof there is fidelity ; you'll cleave 
To me, and saw me to the end and in 
The end ! " Her meanings deep were not too deep 
For my absorptive, hungry heart, and there 
In horror-stricken chill, o'er-ridden all 
By conqu'ring love, I pledged myself. 

"I'll play 
The role," she said, " and you'll abet. It must 
Go out, that I discovered he was not 
My answering affinity, and sent 
Him off. I'll be as gay as proper for 



Tethered Truants. 

A girl, still heart-whole, but emerging from 

A semi-flirting episode that fooled 

Them all and justified the false report 

Of an engagement. You will too, assume 

A levity you do not feel, and be 

My beau. So loving me as I love him 

You'll nearly die for me, as wholly I 

Will die of him for you and for myself 

And all. They'll call me heartless and a flirt, 

But that, that I can bear ; I've come at last 

To need that dubitative subterfuge 

Which is so handy oft for men : The end 

Will justify the means. We'll go out in 

Society ; we'll be together much 

And seem to relish life. So now, dear triend- 

My real friend, we understand our parts. 

Your love, albeit not requited full 

Is equal to the task— and mine for him 

AVho slew me with mine own unmeasured love 

In using first, then spurning it— that love 

With its dread superadded consequence, 

Will buoy me through it all." 

She ended thus, 
Well knowing that for her sweet sake, I would 
Dissimulate my soul away, if there 
Were need. We parted there but kept our faith. 
Her bravery ! 'Twas something more than mere 
Forgetf ulness of self for some grand end— 
'Twas heroism, not like any burst 
Of valor : it was a continued stress 
Of awful purpose which could not be balked 
By Fate itself. Exteriorly she seemed 
Contented, and her ready joke or smile, 
Or silv'ry laugh, were understood to be 
A joke, or smile, or laugh, just as she'd willed. 
This crushing of her heart-break out of sight 
Soon told upon her health. The lily fast 
Displaced the rose, and each fair nestling place 
Of dimples soon became the habitat 
Of lines the doctor understands. And thus, 



126 Tethered Truants. 

Her deep resolve was seconded by kind 
Pathology. All saw her failing case, 
But no one understood its cause but her 
And me. It brought a quiet joy to her, 
And for her sake to me. Her parents and 
Her brothers and her sisters and her friends 
Grew anxious, and I had to seem to put • 
My skill to its severest test for her, 
But still she failed, for — Itvas saving her ! 

She knew she might anticipate, and none 

Would know but me. So when a messenger, 

White-lipped with scare came thundering at my door 

One sad, black night, and summoned me in haste 

To Ethel's home, I knew the tragedy 

Was closing fast. My agony of love, 

Blood -drenched, gave wings to me, and soon 

I stood beside her bed. There, writhing with 

Atrocious pangs, my Ethel lay. She had 

Not chosen a lethean drug, for fear 

They might suspect. I knew the antidote, 

But with a bleeding heart and trembling hand, 

Selected that, potential only for 

A fading euthanasia. 

So she died — 
Of " heart failure," for that is popular 
And handy for the doctor. Ah ! it was 
Heart-failure, in that deep abysmal sense 
Interpretable only by those souls 
Whose light goes out in woe. 

And, as I gazed 
Upon that picture of white innocence — 
That remnant of the beautiful and good, 
Wrapt in th' eternal silences, my soul 
Distinctly heard, in psychic speech, the words: 
" You saved me to the end, and in the end." 



Tethered Truants. 127 

LITTLE GOLDIN HAIR. 

They's heaps o' purty childern in this worl' of ourn, I know— 
You'll see a sprinkle of 'em a'most any place you go ; 
In the churches, an' the schools, an' on the streets, an' everwhere, 
But putt 'em all in one, they couldn't ekal Goldin Hair. 

They's onct 'na while a gyrl 'at's pearantly good in ever way 
'At you kin think of — docyle an' obejent; don't quorl in her play; 
Goes strick to Sunday-school, an' at bed-time sez her prayer, 
But sech is unly a leetle good, cumpared to Goldin Hair. 

Her beauty wuz a stiddy an' onchangeable supprise, 

An* her goodness wuz jes' fitten fer a child in paradise; 

An' more'n onct Merriar, in a narvous-like dispair, 

Hez said: "Oh, Ephraim ! shill we ever know our Goldin Hair?" 

Pear'd zef she wuz so strange-like, 'at we couldn't cipher out 
The meanin' of the curus things she often talked about— 
Seem'd like we couldn't git ust to her, ner onderstan' jes' where 
She got sech queer idees, fer jes' a child, like Goldin Hair. 

We couldn't figger what she meant, when sayin' 'at she could see 

Sech brightness Way beyend the skies, most to eternity, 

But long, an' long fore she wuz seven, one thing wuz mighty 

clair — 
Our child wuz driftin' back to heaven— our precious Goldin 

Hair! 

She didn't hev no sickness, ner no kind of ache, ner pain — 
We never heer'd her moan, ner groan, ner anyways cumplain; 
She faded out of life wuz all, an' wher the dimples were 
Wuz left a frozden smile fer us — the last of Goldin Hair. 

I wisht 'at she'd ben mean sometimes, an' quorld, an' nairly fit; 
An' sassed me an' her mother, ef 'twuz jes' a leetle bit — 
I wisht 'at she'd ben cross-eyed, an' ben yeller, 'stid of fair, 
Fer them air things might lighten some, our grief fer Goldin 
Hair. 

But most I wisht is, me'n Merriar hed scolded her someway, 
Er mebbe whupt her — cause the storm blow'd down the wheat 

that day, 
Fer then we'd both ben jestified, teetotal, fair an' square, 
In blowin' out our brains, an' goin' up to Goldin Hair! 



128 Tethered Truants. 

DsTTE^TSIOK 

In forming our judgment upon social questions, 
we must discriminate between the technical natural, 
and the natural natural. Kordau and other philoso- 
phers of his class, classify as unnatural all non- 
conformatory manifestations. After all, however is 
the suceptibility of intension to exaggeration much 
different from its capacity for sublimated expression ? 
Is there no valid place in the upper realm of thought 
for too-tooness? Indeed, can aught be too very too? 
If thought-strain blossom into mental orgasms which 
are far without wontedness, shall we infallibly call it 
insanity ? Was Walt Whitman insane ? Are Swin- 
burne, and Zola and Ibsen crazy? How about the 
composer, Wagner? 

The higher different is what Intension seeks. When 
merely selfish in end, it ignores the technical natural, 
and its ultimate expressions become abnormities, so- 
called. It is the technical natural that Norclau, and 
like philosophers plead for. Within that sphere the 
swart is not so sacred as the beautiful. A compost 
heap is not so good as a marvellous painting; the 
croak of a toad is not so close to God as is some 
dreamful symphony. 

In its strenuous quest for the novel, a form of 
Intension turns upon the limits of the possible, and 
trends toward the degenerate, as we call it. Because 
one thing is actually as sacred as another, this has a 
naturally natural justification. A famous actress 
threw her little pet dog into a red hot stove. This 



Tethered Truants. 129 

piece of diabolism was the price of a new thrill, to 
be recalled and painted on the face in some dreadful 
passage of rhetoric. 

To express themselves, Intensists are driven to 
break the monotony of propriety. They must find 
palpitant reciprocals outside the limits of correctness, 
as sanely construed. A pushed virility becomes pru- 
riency, settling at last into a mordant erethism of 
salacity, which carries the victim far without the 
technical natural. Therefore, we have our Oscar 
Wildes. It is a remarkable fact that eminent virility 
has a natural parallelism with intellectual brilliancy. 
It is not surprising, therefore, that Oscar Wilde 
soared lonesomely in the very empyrean of original 
thought. The conjointure of luminous intellect- 
ualism, and gross animalism in his case, are ex- 
plicable within sanity, but how outrageous it seems ! 

Socially, conservative intension finds last re- 
sponses in scientific, and spiritual triumphs — epochal 
light-bursts. These confirm the prescience of genius, 
and are gloriously redolent of something not greatly 
different from divine inspiration. An Edison parts 
the veil that hides from the rest of us the subtle pos- 
sibles of a vast prepotent energy. A Holmes, or 
Holland pictures in verbal music the sweet dreamery 
of great souls. A Beethoven, or Mozart opens spir- 
itual vistas, which to traverse, is to be in fellowship 
with the angels. A Beecher, or Bellows lifts us up 
through sacred idealisms, and awesome solemnities, 
and majestic magnificences into the very companion- 
ship of God. 



130 Tethered Truants. 

THE RISING TRAGEDIAN'S LAST 
APPEARANCE. 

[Scene: A bedroom in which there is an actor pacing the floor excit- 
edly. Enter Doctor..) 
Actor— At last, at last thou'rt come ! 'Twas told me thou 

Canst banish— ha ! see'st thou yon eerie troupe 

Of 'gnomes? Now help me, an thou lovest me ! 

But see ! That monstrous helgramite with bulging eyes 

Hath swallow'd a million carpywogs, and with 

A snake about its throat, tied four-in-hand, 

It forget h hitherward ! 
Doctor — Be calm, dear sir, 

"lis but a play of mental images. 
Act — My fancy then gone mad? It is not true — 

That hideous Xentogriff ; that warted skewk ; 

That venomed scortle — they but figments of 

A mind diseased ? 
Doct. — 'Tis even so, my friend. 
Act. — Thou art mistaken, learned sir. With all 

Thy erudition — hist ! that stridulous 

Outcry, intoned with clammy groans. Alas ! 

Thou canst not hear these things. I would thou couldst 

For one bare little moment. This, thou callst 

Imagination ! Bah ! The purring, suave 

Complaisancy ; the unctuous dignity ; 

The pretty platitudinarianism 

Of learn'd pretense — it tireth me ! List thou: 

Hast ever looked down through a microscope 

Into the nether world? Hast seen, in moss — 

In simple moss that children play with — an 

Old forest, dense inhabited with strange, 

And nameless creatures which do sport or fight 

Amid its foliage, or on the ground 

Beneath — hast seen this thing? 
Doct. — 'Tis true, I have. 
Act. — And if thou tell it to the dolt — the man 

That's sane, and who's not drunken with too much 

Of knowledge — he'll straightway accuse thee of 

Delirium tremens probably. And he 



Tethered Tenants. 131 

Will pity thee for being such a weak 

And hopeless victim of illusions. Ah, 

Illusions ! They exist ahvays in some 

One else. The handy subterfuge are they 

Of curst, conceited ignorance. 

Good God ! They come again ! Green devils with red eyes. 

And three-tined tails; and horned bogles squat, 

Astride of slimy saurians, and snakes 

With bifurcated Cauda, and — (sinks exhausted into a chair.) 
Doct. — Drink this. 

(He drinks, and after a space rallies.) 
Act. — Ah, yes, that helps, and that it helps doth prove 

The truth of what I'd say. The atmosphere 

Is crowded with what thou wouldst call microbes. 

In fact, the air and earth, and we ourselves 

Are swarming with strange beasts, and flying things. 

The spirit of strong drink, condensed and packed 

To a particular degree, exalts 

Our senses until we are in direct 

And visible relationship with all 

The horrid crew. Not microbes they ; ah, no, 

But raging, writhing imps, and hell-bent things . 

Full grown, whose horror can not be described. 

E'en now, e'en now {shrinking and shuddering) in swirling 
legions they 

Swoop dowm — a damned phantasmagoria 

Of infernal spooks, and sprites, and furies, all 

Intwined with hissing serpents — Christ ! 

{Strikes and parrys with an imaginary, sword and at last drops — 
dead.) 
Doct.— And so 

Endeth the brilliant promise, now so near 

Fulfilled — a promise that once swelled with pride 

The hearts of mother, and of father, 'nd sent 

Sweet blushes gratulant, into a sister's cheeks, 

When e'er 'twas coupled with his worshiped name. 

His burning genius, turned at last from out 

Its orbit, doth with quick investiture 

Conceive a necessary theory, 

And hugging this more closely to his heart 



132 Tethered Truants. 

Than any histrionic dream — he dies. 

How old this history, which with itself 

E'er rhymes itself through sweeping cycles : Bright,. 

Adventurous hopes, supernal dreams lit up 

With young life's iridescent imagery — 

All wrecked as penalty for heedlessness. 

Dead Clarence, fare thee well! Thy last, last role, 

With tragedy enough, thou'st acted out. 



THE BACHELOR'S QUAKDARY. 

I love Louise, I'm sure I do, 

But how on earth to show it ; 
How in creation to contrive 

A way to let her know it — 
What language of the eyes to speak 

When e'er the ducky meets me, 
So she may know beyond all doubt 

That I do love her, beats me. 

I've called on her two several times, 
Since first we got acquainted, 

And shocked myself, the last time, bad- 
She must have almost fainted — 

By intimating that I thought, 
In general proposition, 

The sexes were designed to pair, 
And loved by intuition. 

I've studied books on etiquette, 

And books on love made easy, 
And military tactics too, 

Long e'er I saw Louisa — 
I've noticed with precisive care 

The mien, and general carriage 
Of sprigs, to whom it seemed but play 

To pave the way to marriage ; 



Tethered Truants. 133 

I've read a million novelettes, 

Including Beadle's series, 
And pored for hours in rapt delight 

O'er wondrous tales of fairies — 
I've watched the moon, night after night, 

When keen frosts set me quaking, 
And vainly tried to steal from her 

The secret of love-making. 

But all the modes and theories 

Derived from these resources, 
Have failed me when I needed most 

The help of extra forces ; 
And I have half concluded that, 

For reasons plain to Fate, 
It was not in Creation's plan 

That I should conjugate. 



THE JUMPIN' RACE. 

BY JOHNNY. 

Bill Grubbs, he's bigger' n me ; 'at's why 

He licks me w'en no one is by 

To take my part. But tother day 

I beat him good. " Les go an' play 

Out'n the medder," I said, an' he 

Wuz willin'. " Bet ye can't beat me 

A jumpin' " I said ; nen he said : 

" Bet cher I kin." " Thes come ahead," 

I said, an' nen I found a place 

'At wuz thes boss fer a jumpin race. 

He tuck a run an' jumpt his best, 

An' lit 'na yeller-jacket's nest ! " 

Nen Bill, he didn't wait to see 

Which win'd the race— him er me. 



134 Tethered Truant*. 

SHOULD IS SHALL. 

In a dark, and a hard, and a primitive age, 

An image-thought, roughly ideal, 
Leapt out of the brain of a barbaric sage, 

In search of its complement real. 

And one after one, countless millions of times, 
Since that epochal, far Then and There, 

Ideals have flashed out in quest of their rhymes 
In the actual, sometime, somewhere. 

Of all of the strange, and the startling conceits, 
Thrown out since that dim, distant yore, 

Full many are lost in substantial repeats, 
And are vag'ries, and visions no more. 

Hypotheses, laughed at with scorn in the past, 

Have advanced into theory's bound, 
And thence into doctrines, becoming at last. 

Modern maxims, demonstrably sound. 

In the concourse of cosmic events, at the end, 

The question's the answer's reply, 
And reflected from somewhere in natural trend, 

Is want, thrown back from supply. 

In this tensive era, this strenuous now, 

The cumulant questions of old, 
And the puzzles of What ? and the problems of How ? 

Are solved as the decades are told. 

Each query that springs from the brain or the heart — 

As analogies endless have taught — 
Is only the answer's concomitant part, 

And Must is the Echo of Ought. 

That question which springeth for aye from the soul, 

With its trembling hope, and its fear — 
Shall' t meet its response? shall the parts merge in whole? 

Shall endless procession end here ? 



Tethered Truants. 135 



DIALECT POETRY. 



The literary legitimacy of dialect poetry has been 
questioned. In this fact I find justification for this 
paper, in which it will be attempted to prove that 
dialect verse is entitled to a place in the realm of 
letters, only second to that occupied by unquestioned 
poetry. It is my purpose to be succinct, and to shun 
dreamy transcendentalisms which, whatever may be 
their peculiar charm, are logically misleading. 

It is generally held that the accurate definition of 
poetry is impossible. The critics would have us 
think of it as a divine essence, derived partly from 
the object and partly from the subject. If we will 
drop sky-skimming and be practical, I am sure a 
definition of poetry will be found to be quite feasible. 
Referring the reader to the paper headed, "What is 
Poetry," I will simply state here that: Whether a 
spoken utterance or written passage is poetic or not, 
depends upon whether, or not, it appeals to the 
aesthetic sense; and whether, or not, it does this, 
depends upon the language used — not upon the 
thought back of it. There are no thoughts possible 
to the poet, which are not possible to the prosist. 
Furthermore, even as rippling, laughing music is still 
music; so humorous or witty verse may still be 
poetry. Has anyone the hardihood to claim that 
good dialect verse does not touch the aesthetic sense? 

Generally, dialect poetry is to the legitimate what 
the picture of a lowly scene is to one of the Madonna, 
or some classic group. The one may discover exactly 
the same grade of genius in its creator as that exhib- 



136 Tethered Ten ants. 

itecl in the work of the other, but the first will 
awaken feelings very different from those called into 
play by the second. They are both pictures equal iu 
artistic merit, but they differ in spiritual value. The 
one may excite holy emotions, as of pity or human 
sympathy, but there may enter into this emotional 
assembly elements of the ludicrous. There will be 
the .bare-armed, red-haired nurse in some impossible 
posture, which was made to be by her frantic effort 
to rescue a falling child. A father with a horsey odor 
and patched pants will be there, and upon his rugged 
features will be written some heroic purpose or tender 
sentiment. The mother will be seen in five-cent 
calico, and the glory of a divinity which is possible 
to motherhood only. The small boy, with nothing 
on his feet but a stone-bruise, and nothing on his 
head but the brimless suggestion of a hat, will turn 
up a face lighted with the spice of deviltry and the 
holiness of innocence. This is the picture which 
brings into activity those feelings upon which depend 
human sympathy and kinship. 

Take, on the other hand, a Madonna executed by 
the same master. In this there is not a trace of the 
light or frivolous. It is wholly beautiful and entirely 
spiritual. You see through that trustful, peaceful 
face clear into Heaven. While you look upon it you 
cannot laugh, although you may not sigh, and a wit- 
ticism at such a time would jar harshly upon your 
soul — it would be a profanity. You are lifted into 
the atmosphere of a plane, fitly trodden by angels 
alone. This latter picture calls up feelings of a higher 
order than were those awakened by the former, but 



Tethered Truants. 137 

the difference depends upon the subject— not upon 
inequality of skill, and not upon the circumstance 
that the first was not a picture, while the second was. 
They were both pictures, and in an artistic sense, were 
equally meritorious, but they had not equal supra- 
physical values. 

So it is in poetry. In a dialect poem we have a 
section from real life, in which the deformities are 
not hidden. The hero of the poem may make his debut 
in the sentence: "I don't know philosophy, but I kin 
beat any man in the township crackin' a waggin 
wliup;" but in this sentence you get a part of the 
man himself. It is not possible that we could have 
absorbed so much of him, if the poet had corrected 
and polished his language. Pretty word-painting and 
speech-tapestry, charming as they are in themselves, 
refine us out of touch with lowly means and methods. 
It is better for us, as it is for the humble, that we 
occasionally descend from our perches. 

I do not forget that the humblest theme may be 
treated -in legitimate verse, but I hold that in many 
cases it cannot receive full justice outside of the 
dialect form. The adoption of the mannerisms and 
speech peculiarities of our characters puts us en rap- 
port with them as nothing else could. This will 
hardly be denied, and if not, it would appear that 
my task is successfully finished, for it is surely the 
purpose of any writer to make the substance of his 
theme the property of his reader. 

There is a certain charm in dialect poetry which is 
peculiar. It depends upon a quality of heartiness, 
intrinsic to it alone. This is the product of a semi- 



138 Tethered Truants. 

ludicrous edge which is specific to speech quaintness. 
What poet can, in "proper"' language, duplicate the 
flavor of "When the Frost is on the Punkin," etc.? 
At the same time, as great a degree of tenderness, 
sweetness and pathos is possible to it, as to the legit- 
imate. It seems to lack only in dignity, scholasti- 
cism and stateliness, and the very sweetest soul expe- 
riences are easily possible without these elements. 

It is well to remember that there is genuine and 
spurious dialect poetry. Only that is genuine in 
which the spelling is correct, and which is, in fact, 
the dialect of the class to which it is attributed. The 
best expositor in the world, of Hoosier dialect, is 
James Whitcomb Riley. He is entitled to be called 
its discoverer, for although verse in it had been 
attempted by others before he arose, no other poet 
has written so much of it, nor written it so well. 
And right here is a crowning argument for my cause. 
Riley, who is a poet and even a great poet, writes 
dialect verse, and he has told me that while compos- 
ing a dialect poem, he is, so far as he can judge, under 
the same divine pressure as when creating a legit- 
imate one. 

Dialect poetry has a mission in the world. It sat- 
isfies a want as truly as does the legitimate. Besides 
giving variety to literature, it answers questions of 
the soul, which could be answered through no other 
medium. Dialect verse is as certainly a part of legit- 
imate literature as the humbler classes are certainly 
a part of our whole population. 



Tethered Truants. 139 

OLE BOB GRIGGS. 

I reckon you've heerd of Ole Bob Griggs 

Of Miamer ? You haint ? 
Well, I'm danged ! W'y, he's lived h-yer 

Fer — well, I railly caint 
Jes' zackly say. Les see — when they 

Wuz diggin' the canawl — 
Yes, then's the time, jes' forty year, 

This very comin' Fall. 

I ricollect he hed a fight. 

The very night he come, 
With long John Werter. John got smart 

An' sassed him some, he did, 
'Bout politics. Whuch whupped? Well, Jim, 

Fer you to ast that ther, 
When you wuz borned in this township, 

An' alius lived 'round h-yer ! 

But, stranger, you wuz talkin' 'bout 

Bull-headed men. I guess 
Ef you wuz with Bob, jes' a hour 

You'd learn more backfulness 
'En you could stow away. W'y Bob 

Th'ows out at ever breath 
'Nough stubberness to stock a mule — 

Jes' stubbern you to death. 

W'y, sir, Merriar — 'at's his wife — 

Sez he won't never do 
Nothin' forards 'thout you ast 

Him back'ards, an' 'at's true. • 
Jes' loves wrong-eendedness : the most 

Contrariest man, I think 
On yerth. Caint coax him, bit more'n you 

Kin coax a hoss to drink. 

Most the fish he ketches, when he goes, 

He pulls out by ther tail, 
An' he alius, when he goes a huntin' 
■ Jes' takes the back'ard trail. 



140 Tethered Truants. 

Most offishist man 'at ever lived: 

You dasn't argy a bit — 
He'll lick you, ef you don't give in. 

An' 'at's the eend of hit. 

He tuck his licker straight, 'at's true. 

An' soaked his dratted hide 
To suit the sloonist, an' outcussed 

Us all, ef he half tried, 
But all o' this, he done with sech 

A air of stubberness 
'At we'd hev jes' as lief 'at he'd 

Hev skipped the hull dern mess. 

Jined church, Bob did, to beat the devil, 

Cause the preacher'd said, 
'At Satan had him 'thout no need 

O' him a bein' dead. 
An' strick — we dasn't cheap a oath 

Fore Bob ! The same ole trait — 
He's stubberner ner jes' a mule, 

'At's in cahoots with fate ! 



HAD HER FOETLST TOLD. 

I'm not sech a overly oldish-like gyrl, 

An' I hain't went much out in sassiety. 
I haint never travelled much over the worF , 

But I think 'at I know what's perpriety. 

I haint never studied no French, an' don't know 

How to play onto airy pianer, ner draw, 
But when't comes to milkin', I aint very slow, 

An' fer washin' an' bakin' I'm ekal to maw. 

They haint many gyrls 'at hez hed, like I've hed, 

Sech a dreadful, and tryin' uxperience with ther feller 

An' it all come about frum a liftin' the led 

Clean off'n the futer, by a good fortin' teller. 



Tethered Truants. 141 

Some folks is so ignernt, an' soft-like an' green, 
'At they don't quite bleve fortin' tellers foresee ; 

I guess ef they'd went through all I did, an' seen 

What I did, they'd change an' would bleve, same as me. 

I went with my pop to the village one day, 
An' he sole a hoss, nen got full to the brim, 

An' a friend went an' tuck all his money away, 
An' gev it to me to take keer of fer him. 

Thinks I, "Now's my time — I alius craved so 

Fer to jes' have my fortin' tole ; this is my chaince." 

An' I went to a seer at the hotel below, 

Which his name is De Leppert, an' he is frum Fraince. 

I paid him the doller'n edvance, frum pop's roll ; 

Then he tuck holt my han' with a quiet-like smile, 
Nen all on a suddent, he said : "Bless my soul ! 

Yer the luckiest gyrl, I've seen fer one while. 

"Very soon, yes, prehaps in a hour you'll meet 
The man 'at is destined to be your dear feller — 

He's handsome, an' rich, an' his smile it is sweet, 

An' he wears a plug hat an' a green silk umbreller." 

An' shore 'nough I met him — 'twas at the depot, 
An' he'd had his fortin' tole too, fer he said : 

"De Leppert was right, an' it mus' jes' be so — 
She fills the hull bill frum her feet to her head." 

Nen he made love to me an' I hendered him not, 

Cause I know'd it was right, an' hed all been presaged. 

An' he slipped on my finger a ring 'at he'd brought, 
Nen said : " This will show 'at us two is ingaged." 

Nen he rassled me roun' in his new-born delight, 

An' hugged till I thought he would hug me to death, 

An' he kissed, an' kissed me with all of his might — 
Oh, he kissed tell I scacely could breathe any breath I 

A train whustled closte, an' with sweet meltin' eyes, 
He gazed on me. Takin' the ring back again, 

"I'll hev our names kyarved on this, dear Sary Lize," 
He said, nen jumped on the step o' the train. 



142 Tethered Truants. 

When I got to my home my money wuz gone, 

An' how I could lost it, I hev no idee, 
But I said : " Never mind — don't worry none ; 

My lovyer is rich, an' he'll pay pop fer me. 

But he hain't never come, and I'm fear'd 'at he's dead — 
My dear, sweet Alfonser, 'at loved me so good, 

An' I grieve, an' I pine tell I'm out of my head, 
An' I wusht I could die, an' I would ef I could. 

Yes, some is so awfully ignernt an' green, 

'At they don't quite bleve fortin' tellers foresee; 

I guess ef they'd went th'ough all I did, an' seen 

All I hev, they'd change, an' would bleve, same as me. 



THE LOCOMOTIVE. 

Note.— This was written in competition with a couple of doggerel 
grinders who had contributed a couple of "pomes" (on the same subject) to a 
village paper). 

I. 

The locomotive is a rapid thing — 

It flies along on a rapid wing. 

Nothing its velocity can scarcely restrain — 

It rushes along with might — likewise with main. 

II. 

Nothing in the world is a prettier sight 
Than to hear one thundering along at night — 
The sparks fly right— they also fly left, 
And the locomotive never gets out of breath. 

III. 
Woe unto the cows which on the track remain, 
When the iron horse comes with its rattling train ; 
Ten chances to one they'll all get freighted 
To another world by being eviscerated. 



Tethered Iruants. 



IV, 



14: 



The iron horse no pity ever shows ; 

He is utterly devoid of love and things like those, 

But though he hasn't any sense, or anything of the kind, 

The engineer he knows exactly how to make him mind. 

V. 

The locomotive was invented many years ago 
By a man who was tired of riding slow ; 
We ought to all join in giving him praise 
For inventing an article so useful in these days. 

VI. 
But, Mr. Editor, my muse shows signs of exhaustion 
And I must drop for the present this pleasant discussion, 
Hoping to hear again from some one in this mix, 
I thus respectfully close my verses six. 



CINCINNATAIRE. 

Ah, beg pardon— did you ask me, dear saire, 

What I think of the city of Cincinnataire? 

I'll tell you, and tell you the truth, bon mistaire. 

I've visited Boston, New York, Baltimaire. 

And Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Philadelphaire ; 

St, Louis and Cleveland, and San Franciscaire— 

I've braced 'gainst Chicago's wet, wild atmosphaire ; 

Lived in London, Berlin, and Paris so faire— 

In fact I have been almost every whaire, 

But for bus'ness that's genuine, steady and squaire ; 

For wealth that is not in your mind, but is thaire ; 

For beautiful suburbs, and health-giving aire ; 

For true social upness, with nothing bizaire ; 

For men who are solid, upright, debonaire, 

And women who're gentle and sweet as they're faire ; 

For a feel-at-home place, where the people don't caire 

So much about show, so you're honest and squaire ; 

For these, and many more things, my dear saire, 

Oommend me forever to Cincinnataire. 



144 Tethered Truants. 

LATENT FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 

The mind possesses latent or potential qualities, 
whose ultimate expression defies earth-life compre- 
hension. We catch vivid and startling hints of the 
soul's omnipotent connections through phenomena 
that call into immediate perception psychic glints 
which can depend upon scarcely less than omnis- 
cience. In proportion as this expedient body is sep- 
arated from our real self-hoods, our untrammelled 
egos play themselves into their clarified scope. 

There is a phenomenon recognized by all physio- 
psychologists called "'unconscious cerebration." The 
phrase has not even the merit of being harmlessly 
unmeaning, for it conveys the impossible idea of one 
being at the same time absent and present. Cerebra- 
tion is included in consciousness, if it is not a part of 
it. The more occult psychic phenomena point to the 
conclusion that the brain is merely the connecting 
link between our proper selves and our physical 
environments. This is not regulation philosophy, 
but it has the merit of being supported by acknowl- 
edged tacts, which the standard has not. We sift 
into the world through our brains, and we are infi- 
nitely superior to our brains. According to the 
philosophy of our thought-leading biologists, includ- 
ing Tj-ndall, Spencer et al., our brains are supreme 
and we are its products. All the differences of prim- 
itive personalities depend upon peculiarities of the 
final relationship of histogenetic ultimates! The 
mistake made is to apply to the soul the conditions 
which control gross matter. The peculiarities of 



Tethered Truants. 145 

sugar- water do depend upon the maple tree's ulti- 
mate structure, but sugar-water is always the same. 
Human bile would be impossible without that aggre- 
gation of matter which composes our bodies, and 
human bile is always the same. The same laws con- 
trol our bodies that control all vitalized matter, but 
these are all conservative, and relate to life-saving 
purposes and perpetuity of the species. There is no 
known law conservative of mental perpetuity, 
theories of hygienists and alienists to the contrary 
notwithstanding. The mind can not fail — its exter- 
nal manifestations can and do, through failure ot its 
medium of expression. To admit that mind can fail 
is to acknowledge matter's superiority to it, and this 
is to contradict the -evidence of our existence. There 
can be no comparisons instituted in the case because 
of the essential and radical difference between mind 
and matter, and this depends upon the mind's super- 
iority to it, and its capacity for true apperception. 

But these are mere arguments in favor of a highly 
plausible theory. The latent powers and marvellous 
reserve capabilities of the mind have been proven 
millions of times. When we go to sleep we retire 
into ourselves, while our physical servant, the body, 
rests and recuperates. What amazing psychic exper- 
iences we may have on the inner side of the sub- 
jective-objective veil during external unconsciousness 
can not even be guessed at. Occasionally when the 
physical medium is intact and actively responsive* 
some of the manifestations of our egos in whole, 
under favoring conditions, will flash out into our 
10 



146 Tethered Truants. 

every-day consciousness. Thus, while asleep, some 
one will discharge a gun close by. In half a second 
we are wide awake, but between the instant when 
the gun's report reached our sensorium, and we 
exchanged the sleeping for the waking state, say one- 
fourth of a second, an elaborate dream is evolved, one 
whose ^beginning and end compassed a long series 
of events and weeks or months of time, the whole 
train having a logical connection with the gun's 
report. Without the report, the dream would not be 
consistent — it suggested and ended this dream which, 
if fully written out, would make a story which it 
would require an hour to read. All this in a fourth 
of a second. 

When the sound reached the thought center it 
found the mind all, 8r nearly all to itself, unoccupied 
in functionating referably to the demands of the 
body. In the intensity of its integrity it evolved, in 
the quarter of a second, what it would have required 
hours, perhaps, to elaborate under conditions which; 
in conservation of physical existence and normal 
relationships, exacted diverse offices of the mind. 

This astounding energy of insulated consciousness 
is also exemplified in that class of cases which our 
scientists improperly call "unconscious cerebration.'' 
Violent happenings, like drowning or other imminent 
peril which drives the mind in upon itself, also illus- 
trate it. In these instances, a whole life will be 
minutely reviewed in the space of a fraction of a 
second. It almost amounts to annihilation of time, 
and is strongly suggestive of that infinity of intelli- 
gence to which the past and future is an eternal now. 



Tethered Truants. 147 

Hypnotism and telepathy which are now undoubted 
facts, depend upon the projectile energy of nearly 
insulated consciousness. The actuator, owing to a 
peculiar power of self-containment, is enabled to par- 
tially insulate his mentality, and in this tense condi- 
tion the will expression of his ego is capable of sym- 
pathetically impressing a distinct and other will- 
force. The fact that mental energy increases in an 
even ratio with its increasing independence of fleshly 
connections, certainly makes it look as if the ego is a 
distinct and permanent entity. Professor Lloyd in 
his wonderful book, Midorpha, very effectively and 
beautifully treats this mental phase. 

Terminally to this line of facts, comes a possible 
theory which, I should think, would be only more 
gracious than startling to hard doubters. It is this : 
That at the supreme moment of dissolution, when 
mental and physical dissociation takes place, the soul 
experiences eternity. If it can compress time so mar- 
vellously when hampered by the body, what could it 
not do when entirely, or all but freed from this 
hindrance'.'' 

Another theory is derivable from these mighty 
psychic facts, that : This life is but a momentary 
expression incident to the eternal life of our astral 
selves. The psychic aside experiences we have here 
and now, would be as dreams within dreams, only 
further demonstrating the vast, unimagined resources 
and possibilities of the human soul. 



\±S Tethered Truants. 

GOD'S WILL BE DONE. 

A light upon her brow — an effluence 

Interpretable only to the soul ; 
It spoke in sweet and restful eloquence 

Of one, by Jesus' graciousness made whole. 
And there she lay — my Eveline, my bud 

Of innocence. Her cheeks, where blushes played 

But yesterweek, were losing, shade by shade, 
The ruddy ensign of youth's bounding blood, 
For she was dying now. She whisper'd me 

As, crushed by woe, I sobbed a prayer, and fell 
Upon my knees: "Don't weep Papa — I see 

The beck'ning hand of God, and all is well." 
For her sweet sake my quiv'ring white lips said : 
" God's will be done," and, and — my child was dead. 



THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY. 

" Oh. what is the spirit of beauty?" I cried 

In a passionate, puzzled despair, 
As I gazed in the skies on a sweet eventide, 

And thought of the mysteries there. 

That instant a fragrance fell over the night, 

And an essence ineffably sweet 
Absorbed me and flashed out in wildering flight 

Toward farness's furthest retreat. 

Out, out through vast vistas, in shimmering haze 
Of scintillant star-dust, I whirled ; 

Through radiant ripples of astrean rays, 
And past pulsing world after world. 

Past galaxies gemmed with bright orbs, as I spun 

Like light through ethereal seas ; 
Past ebulant, emerald sun after sun 

And past the far " Sweet Pleiades." 



Tethered Truants. 149 

On, on, out in planet-isled space till, at last, 

A crystalline bound burst in sight 
With star-circled portal, high -vaulted and vast, 

All glowing in iridal light. 

And I caught, in the instant the gates sprang ajar, 

The glimpse of a glittering throng, 
And there fell on my hearing from hosts, near and far, 

The refrain of a triumphant song. 

'Twill haunt me forever, through pleasure and pain — 

That song from Away and Above, 
With its sweet, and its solemn and sacred refrain : 

The spirit of beauty is love ! 



SCIENTIFIC LESSONS. 

It must be accepted as a cardinal fact that, to one 
who is normal in all his relationships, no scientific 
truth can be repellent. This would seem to prove 
that almost none of us are in perfect harmony with 
that portion of nature which is objectively related 
to us. 

To nearly all of us, in our present intellectual and 
emotional status, many scientific facts are hard, severe, 
almost appalling. This science, upon which hangs 
the very consistency of nature, rudely snatches from 
us the warm, sweet illusions of the past, and replaces 
them with cold, rigorous, blasting facts — blasting 
because disenchanting, and not sympathetically re- 
lated to us as we now are. 

It is humiliating and chilling to the poetic enthu- 
siast, for instance, to have to see finally that poetry 



150 Tethered Truants. 

inheres in the mode of presenting a thought, and not 
in the thought itself. In the start he has transcend- 
ental theories about the "divine afflatus," etc., but 
later he learns, under urgent protest, that any 
thought, with its most delicate shadings, may he 
expressed in prose; and that, whether it becomes 
poetic or not, depends upon whether it can be so pre- 
sented as to touch the aesthetic sense. An attempt to 
translate poetry into another language will convince 
him, if nothing else will. And articulate and written 
language are man-created. 

A thought, too high-born and line to be expressed 
by the pen or tongue, may be translated to canvass or 
marble and there fixed. It may be a composite con- 
cept, holding a vital truth, or a transcription of ideal 
beauty, or both; but there it is, made resident in 
inanimate matter. Driven in upon ourselves by the 
deep, inexplicable significances of this mystery, we 
exclaim, scarcely less piteously than helplessly: 
"What is thought ?" We had been superficially feeling 
all along that it is essentially a psychic constituent, 
intrinsically ours, and necessarily inseparable from 
us. With floods of thought perpetually flowing in 
upon our understandings from all inanimate and ani- 
mate nature, we have been blind to the truth, and the 
disillusionizing disturbance of our self-involvement 
painfully startles us. 

The crowning disturber of our self-complacency 
and our peace is the phonograph. Have you learned 
the lesson of this scientific new-comer? It proves to 
us that the human voice, with all its divine (?) possi- 
bilities, is the product of a mere mechanical device. 



Tethered Truants. 151 

Did a part of the magnetism and generous warmth 
of Abraham Lincoln's nature flavor his voice? Do 
sweetening portions of Patti's soul go into her trills 
and cadences? Did the ineffable essence of spiritual 
beauty and world-compassing love thrill through 
Christ's voice? — all could have been accurately caught 
and fixed in — wax ! If this heartless machine merely 
reproduced the stark, physical voice, and was inca- 
pable of catching those psychic shadings, those 
supreme subtleties that make and individualize the 
ego, it would not seem so disheartening. 

That these things are disagreeable to us, seems a 
portentous fact. To know they are right — and we 
can't help knowing that — is to know we are wrong. 
What are invention and discovery going to do for us? 
Will they finally solve the riddle of existence, and 
will they keep on stripping us of our self-contain- 
ment and unctuosity till we come to see ourselves, 
at last, as naked, inconsequential automatons — the 
matter-of-fact sequences of matter-of-fact natural 
processes ? 

To the unprepared, there is a shudder in every letter 
of every word of that question. The fact is, how- 
ever, that the seemingly dreadful aspects of scientific 
revelations are truths, glorious with God's certainty, 
and luminous with immortal promise. 

The voice is only a temporal expedient. It is the 
servant of our proper selves, even as the artist's brush 
or burin is. The power of the soul to project its 
distinctive elements through physical media to other 
souls, is the very strongest argument there can be in 
favor of its possible independence of the body. This 



152 Tethered Truants. 

power is illustrated with the most startling force by 
the genii board, for here the magnetism of feeling 
may be entirely eliminated, and a projection of pure 
intellect be accomplished. The language of the soul 
is not articulate speech, although its conservative 
elements may be translated into it. The thought or 
feeling carried in a glance, or smile, or sigh, or strain 
of music, or particular quality of beauty, is not ex- 
pressible in speech. The soul is provided with a 
language of its own, but only a limited portion of its 
vocabulary is utilized in Time. It is fully equipped 
for extra-bodily intercourse. 

Potential intelligence exists in everything external 
to our selfhoods — in these it is kinetic. It has been 
said, "Everything has a thought behind it." It would 
be true to say, " Everything has a thought within it." 
This is a reciprocal necessity. God talks to us through 
our whole environment, for God's language, and the 
language of our souls are the same. 

Science is the cold-fact part of God's essence, and 
its unfoldment is at once discovering to us God and 
ourselves. To those in whom perfect trust and 
deathless hope abide, the revealings of science can 
not be repellently shocking. Thus we see that with- 
out reference to those scriptural assurances which 
Christians accept as divine truths, we are in direct 
communion with God, and are absorbing the promise 
of immortality as we breathe. The evidences of a 
future existence, seen in all nature, are so positive 
and unmistakable, that to doubt this mighty fact is 
to compass self-stultification, which is to transcend 
the possible. 



Tethered Truants. 153 

ETIDORHPA. 

< Dedicated in fraternal amenity to John Uri Lloyd.) 

Have you seen it — seen that picture ? 

Oh, its beauty fills your eyes, 
And it fills your yearning spirit 

Till it more than satisfies ; 
Till it surfeits with its sweetness 

As the honey does the bee ; — 
Have you seen it — seen the picture 

That has so enraptured me? 

Oh, the form is sculptured music, 

As your eager soul will see 
In the ravishing revealings 

Of this chiseled symphony ; 
And the pose will hypnotize you 

With a strange and startling sense 
Of the sweetness of the sermon 
Of unconscious innocence. 

'Tis the picture of a maiden, 

With the sunlight in her hair 
Breaking ever into jewels 

As it glints and glitters there ; 
And there's sweet supernal hintings 

In the deeps of dreamful eyes 
That were caught from starlit vistas 

In the spaces of the skies. 

And the brow's a bank of moonlight, 
And the cheeks — they make you think 

Of sweet lilies dipped in sunset 

With their flames of pearly pink, 



154 Tethered Truants. 

And the lips — no verbal music 
Will their witcheries reveal, 

With their imminence of kisses 
Fit for gods to try to steal ! 

Have you seen it — seen the picture 

That has so enraptured me 
With its infinite expression 

Of enchanting mystery ? 
Not until this image-chanson 

Shall electrify your soul 
May you learn the final lesson 

Of Love's uttermost control. 



RHYMIC JIM-JAMS. 

The gnattest gnat that gnats 
Is just the "nattiest" gnat, 

And the sprattest sprat that sprats 
Is the scaliest, tinniest sprat. 

The skeetest skeeter that skeets 
Is the skeeter with longest bill, 

He'll keep you under the sheets 
Or bite till he gets his fill. 

The froggest frog that frogs 
Is the greenest croakiest frog, 

And the woggest wog that wogs 
Is the polliest pollywog. 

The whalest whale that whales 
Is the utmost whaliest whale, 

And the snailest snail that snails 
Is the leisureliest snail. 

(To be continued.) 



Tethered Truants. 155 



THE DEVIL. 

Men don't believe in a devil now, as their fathers used to do ; 
They have forced the door of various creeds to let His Majesty 

through. 
There isn't a print of his cloven foot, or a fiery dart from his 

bow, 
To be found in earth or air to-day — for the world has voted so. 

But who is mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and brain, 

And loads the bier of each passing year with ten hundred thousand 

slain ? 
Who blights the bloom of the land to-<!au with the fiery breath of hell, 
If the devil isn't and never was ! Won't somebody rise and, tellf 

Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint, and digs the pit for his 

feet ? 
Who sows the tares in the field of Time wherever God sows 

whea t ? 
The devil is voted not to be, and of course the thing is true ; 
But who, just now, is doing the work the devil alone should dof 

We are told he does not go about like a roaring lion now ; 

But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting row 

To be heard in home, in church and State, to the earth's remotest 

bound, 
If the devil by a unanimous vote is no-where to be found? 

Won't somebody step to the front forthwith, and make his 

bow and show 
How the frauds and crimes of a single day spring up? We 

want to know. 
The devil was fairly voted out, and of course the devil's gone; 
But simple people would like to know who carries his business en. 

— [From American Medical Journal for November, 1895. 



tu-^r: 



156 Tethered Truants. 



THE DEVIL. 

]So, " men don't believe in the devil now, like their^fathers'used 
to do," 

Nor do they believe in witch-craft, nor in ghosts and their eerie 
crew ; 

They've [quit believing in vengeance, and hate, and the scath- 
ing rod 

As the emblems of the sovereignty, and the glory of our God. 

If the devil is " mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and 

brain," 
And God created him just for this, then isn't it rather plain 
That God is "blighting the bloom of the land with the fiery 

breath of hell?" 
For if not God, then who is it? Won't some one rise and tell? 

For, what could the puny devil do, without the approving nod 

Of Him who made him, and set him to work — the awful omni- 
potent God ? 

Could he "dog the steps of the toiling saint," in his fight for 
future bliss, 

If God didn't want him to do this thing? AVill some one answer 
this ? 

Alas ! the infinite littleness of the jarring creeds of man. 

Endowing a myth with the power to thwart God's great, bene- 
ficent plan ; 

Construing the effects of outraged law, on the body or soul 
within, 

To be the work of the devil, and done alone for the sake of sin! 

The breath of the new evangel hath dissolved the dreadful ban, 
Placed erst by superstition's God on helpless, hopeless man ; > 
And fear of the devil holds us now no more in its baleful spell, 
For tears of joy, o'er a loving God, have "put out the fires of hell." 



Tethered Truants. 157 

THE PICNIC. 

From my earliest boyhood I was fond of watching 
the actions of the scarabaens, or tumble-bugs. This 
bug, on account of his groveling tastes, is looked 
upon with more or less contempt by his human 
brother. But if he is less refined in gastronomic 
predilections than some other bugs, he is more use- 
ful, for he is an industrious scavenger. He does not 
know that he is a scavenger, and is therefore happy. 
There was a demand for him in the universe, else he 
had never been. He is therefore entitled to the 
respect of the best of us. 

The bug made such an impression on my young 

mind that I once slopped over rhymically on his 

account. I was twelve years old when I wrote the 

rhymes. I had forgotten all about it till the other 

day, when in rummaging through some old papers, 

I found it among my boyish archives. Naturally, it 

has, for me, a kind of classic tang about it. I am 

not sure it will impress my older readers. I am dead 

certain it will interest twelve year old boys. Here 

it is: 

Ez I wuz goin' down the lane 

All on a summer's day, 
I spied beneath a big dock leaf 

Some shiny bugs at play ; 
I stoop-ed down and watch-ed them 

Fer quite a length of while, 
In hopes I might learn somethin' frum 

These creachers of the sile. 

They seem-ed to enjoy theirselfs 

Onto the last degree, 
An' play-ed at ther varis sports 

In happy buggish glee. 



158 



Tethered Truants. 

No doubt they wuz a havin' 

A innercent picnic 
To strenthen buggish sympathy 

An' make its pulses quick. 

Some of them wuz a scufflin 

Like rough boys of tin does, 
An' some wuz playin' hide and seek 

With many a gleeful buzz ; 
An' some wuz playin' marvel 

By rollin' of a ball 
More'n twict ez big ez their own selfs- 

'Twant like boys plays at all. 

An' some wuz promenadin' round 

An' smilin at each other. 
An' buzzin' sweetly jes ez if 

They liked to be together, 
An' as I bent my head closte down 

To watch two passin' by, 
I seed a she bug blush a blush 

An' heerd her sigh a sigh. 

An' thus they wuz enjoyin' therselves 
Ez best did suit their tast-es 

An' not suspectin' any harm 
Frum any other beast-es. 

When all a suddent, oh! alas! 
A black snake on 'em pounced. 

An' without any warnin', gob- 
Bled them all up to onct ! 

MORAL. 

They's harm kennected with picnics, 

Er may be so kennected. 
An' consekently none should go, 

No odds how well perfected, 
The vipers an' the black snakes 

Which lives on reputations, 
Is most ez likely to be there 

Ez in life's other stations. 



Tethered Truants. 159 

IDEALISM AND THE NATURE OF MIND. 

The idealism of the Hindoos, without doubt, rep- 
resents the most rational form of that doctrine there 
is, or ever was. It must be a fact that there is no 
conceivable objection to the theory, which they have 
not faithfully considered and disposed of. The last 
conclusion of their philosophy is that nothing exists 
but mind, and they do not tell us what mind is. 

It is competent for the humblest individual to have 
views on these subjects, and they may be as nearly 
correct as those of the savants, so far as proofs can 
go. It is not such an audacious thing then for an 
ordinary, every-day man to express himself on the 
subject. This ought to clear the way for so obscure 
an individual as myself. 

There exist arguments against the doctrine of pure 
idealism which I have never seen brought forward. 
There is a possible. theory as to the nature of mind, 
which I have never seen urged by a class of philos- 
ophers. But "there is nothing new under the sun," 
so it is past doubt that my notions on these subjects 
have careered through the brains of thousands of 
men. They are original with me, however, according 
to my knowledge, and that excuses me to myself, at 
least, for presenting them. 

As to objectivity and subjectivity: Shut of! all 
avenues to the thought-center from birth, in a child, 
i. e., destroy its live senses, and this insulated being 
could never think. It could not think, because, to it, 
there would be nothing to think about. It could not 
even be conscious, because it would have nothing to 



160 Tethered Truants. 

be conscious with, and besides, there would exist no 
natural excuse for consciousness in this case. This 
being would exist in the same sense as that in which 
a vegetable does, but in no other. 

The possibility of consciousness, and therefore, of 
intellect, and consequently of emotion, depends upon 
things external to self, so to call it. The fact is, the 
very ego depends for existence upon the outer world. 
The normal brain contains the basis of an intellectual 
center which is in more or less direct relation with 
all the rest of the universe. The possibility of the 
rest of the universe depends upon this intellectual 
center. Reciprocally, the possibility of this intel- 
lectual center depends upon the rest of the universe. 
One is complementary to the other. If there were 
nothing to think about, there could be no thought; 
if thought were impossible, there could be nothing 
to think about. The doctrine therefore, that nothing 
exists except objectively, seems at least as reasonable as 
that nothing exists except sabjectivct;/. 

As to mind : It is a rational theory that mind is the 
last refinement of matter, and that this sublimed 
matter pervades the universe. By an inevitable pro- 
cess of differentiation and segregation, an intellectual 
capital came to be. This great mental center is the 
human brain. In "dumb matter," mentalit}^ exists 
potentially — in the brain, kinetically. The necessity 
of reciprocity makes latent mentality responsive to 
manifest mind. This is the only hypothesis that will 
account for the inter-relationship of mind and matter. 
There could, otherwise, be no coalition between the 
two ; neither could absorb the other. That there is 



Tethered Truants. 161 

an interchange of mental molecules between grosser 
matter and mind is past doubt.* It has been said that 
everything has a thought behind it. It would be the 
truth to say that everything has a thought within it. 
The thought that has been translated into a picture 
and fixed there, is capable of exchanging molecules 
with the mind. The balance is preserved by the law 
of natural conservatism. So far as that is concerned, 
it could supply the subjective demand without limit 
and practically forever, without exhaustion. Think 
of the possibilities of so gross a thing as musk in this 
respect, and you will readily understand it. 

The theory of the mind's materiality is the only 
one that will explain, so tar as they are explainable, 
the various occult phenomena which are facts. That 
the mind is material is as susceptible of demonstra- 
tion as one of Euclid's propositions. Thus, love is a 
mental manifestation, for without mind there could 
be no love. Love is not a state of consciousness, unless 
"state," in this connection, is susceptible of increase 
and diminution. You can love Mary more than you 
love Ann, which would be impossible if love is merely 
a state, i. e., an abstraction, i. e., nothing. Abstrac- 
tion (nothing) can not be multiplied nor divided, can 
not be added to, nor taken from. An abstraction does 
not do things, can neither act nor be acted upon. Love 
does things. It is capable of action and reaction. 
This is possible to substances only. No sane person 
will deny that, other things being equal, the death of 
ten persons causes just ten times as much gr,ief as does 



:: The reader, remembering its everlasting patness, will forgive the frequent 
iteration of this allusion. 11 



162 Tethered Truants. 

the death of one person. All sane and reasonable 
people must agree that this could not be the case, if 
grief is not a substance. They have to admit it unless 
they hold that something and nothing are identical. 
This would be self-contradiction, which is impossible. 
The intellect, the emotions, the passions, pain, etc., 
are all substantial manifestations. How could they 
otherwise affect or even abolish the functions of 
various organs, notably that of the heart ? Many a 
person has been startled into convulsions, frightened 
into insanity, or shocked to death by bad news. This 
non-integrative intelligence, falling upon the integra- 
tive, starts a conflict in the economy which ends dis- 
astrously or not, according to the relative volumes of 
these opposing forces. And realize too, as you go 
along, that force is a substantial manifestation. Ad- 
ditionally to the crowning fact that it can not be 
thought of as anything else, there are scores of resist- 
less arguments confirmatory of this. I challenge any 
philosopher living to logically demolish the foregoing 
argument relative to the materiality of mind. 

The mind, being material, cannot apprehend any 
thing (so to call it) which is not material itself. We 
talk about spirit, but we cannot think of it except as 
being a thing. If it is not material, it is properly no- 
thing — nothing, and therefore unthinkable. "Noth- 
ing" is negativeness, and the meaning of negativeness 
can get into our understandings through the inter- 
position of materiality alone. If matter grosser than 
the mind did not exist, the signification of negative- 
ness, and all other so-called abstractions, such as terms 



Tethered Truants. 163 

and names, could not be. Cerebration is substantial 
and can be related to the substantial alone. We talk 
of space, but cannot think of it. There is no space. 
What we think of as space has boundaries — a quality 
of matter. Every part of the universe is occupied. 
That which we habitually call space is distance. It 
is all taken up with tenuous forms of matter, such as 
air, gases, ether, etc. The ultimate molecule of ether 
is surrounded by and contains something — a form of 
matter attenuated to a refinement which is in apposi- 
tion with infinity. There is no void. 

There is nothing belittling or humiliating in the 
theory that the mind is material.* This sublimal 
essence is indistinguishable from the infinite, being 
immeasurably beyond our present power of compre- 
hension. So far as that is concerned, is not the lowest, 
-coarsest form of matter, of which we have any know- 
ledge, as sacred and near to God as any other? It 
•cannot be denied that it is. The soul, instead of 
being an intangible figment, is matter, indestructible 
and eternal. As such it holds the potency and 
promise of perpetuity as an entity. The vacuous 
idea, theologically entitled spirit, is a mere term, 
whose philological existence, even, depends upon 
matter. The term is not the ideal transcript of any 
immateriality that does or can exist. There is nothing 
but matter. 



*I use "mind" as a term representative of the ego. Those fine, but very 
vague and nebulous differentiations, necessary to a consistent bible theology. 
I disregard, using the terms mind, soul and spirit interchangeably. It is men- 
tality that makes consciousness possible, and self-consciousness is entitative- 
ness. Mind includes all and is therefore the ego. 



164 Tethered Truants. 

OUR EDIE. 

[Written when my daughter, Edith, was two years old. 

Our Edie's a wee, wee toddler, 

With love-lit and wondering eyes, 
With ringlets of goldenest sunshine 

And cheeks of the rosiest dies ; 
She's a sweet and perpetual wonder, 

An animate nutter of glee : 
A radiant gem in our household — 

A crystallized smile is she. 

A waif is our Edie from heaven. 

The light of that glorious sphere 
Still shining throughout all her nature. 

As love-light illumines a tear : 
Our baby's a marvel of cuteness ; 

A prodigy — yea she's a feat ; 
Indeed, she's a real phenomenon 

Of everything pretty and sweet. 

The result of my wife's calculation. 
All of which, by the way, I endorse. 

May briefly be stated as follows: 

(Just naming the generals, of course,) 

Our baby's the preciousest baby, 
The cutest cherubicest bun ; 

The lovingest, playfulest infant — 
The pricelessest under the sun. 

Before our wee ruler was given us, 

We wondered continually how 
A parent could ever "put up with" 

A child, and its unceasing row ; 
But now the perplexing conundrum 

That puzzles myself and my wife, 
Is, how on earth babyless people 

Do manage to worry through life. 



Tethered Truants. 165 

A PICTURE IN REMINISCENCE. 

Back through a mist of years, and tears — 
Through a desolate tangle of hopes, and fears, 
I see, like a star in its depths serene, 
The radiant face of my lost Ethline — 
My innocent, lost Ethline. 

And too, from out the dreamy past, oft floats to 
me, that plaintive, reedy assonance that bore her 
ready thoughts, or bursts of wanton glee. What 
poet-sculptor's loftiest concept had God realized in 
her, or had she been translated from her native 
lieaven to earth? 

And this is not o'er-wrought, for all along the 
shores of life are here, and there, the actualized 
ideals of earth's sweetest dreamers — so disposed, as 
beacons to us coarser ones. What myriads of 
worldlets may there be throughout the interstellar 
deeps, but we see only those that talk to us in splin- 
tered light. So, may not the angels see, at least, the 
soul-light of these favored ones? 

'Twas on a restful eve in June, and I had strolled tar 
down the river's shore, in careless wantonness. For 
all that I could know, no special influence directed 
me, but who shall read the riddles, or the modes of 
Fate? 

Gaining a wooded eminence, something — a zephyr, 
as it were, from heaven — floated in upon my con- 
sciousness. 'Twas more than music — it was music 
sweetened with the dreaminess of some old, half- 
forgot romance. But, drawing nearer to a leafy 
copse, its definition cleared, and I could hear the 



166 Tethered Truants. 

warblings of an alto flute, intwining with a voice that 
seemed as borrowed from a seraph, and supporting 
these, the vibrant harmony of a guitar. 

And that ecstatic moment, as I stood atremble r 
with bared head and hungry, eager eyes ! Its 
imprint marks my soul, e'en yet. 

The war between my wildly throbbing heart, and 
prim convention, soon was o'er, and who shall doubt 
the issue ? Heart philosophy takes little heed of that 
profane convenience — propriety; and so, with stam- 
mering step, and main' a pang of self-misdoubt, I 
stumbled on, until, emerging from a clump of chap- 
arral, I saw her there — Ethline, and — her lover? 

Ah, what peculiar, verbal melody shall paint the 
glory of her loveliness ? Her beauty held that Attic, 
subtle sweetness which' the poet's pen and painter's 
brush are ever reaching for, but which they never 
reach ; that tender far-away celestialism, which for- 
ever staggers understanding and enslaves the soul. 

And he, that man? He bore the seal of native 
royalty; for gentle dignity, and quiet bravery, and 
high nobility were writ upon his brow and form and 
shone in every lineament. And I — I could have 
killed him for't. 

My awkward, hesitant apology was met with easy, 
cultured grace, and then he said: "Sister and I 
come here sometimes to serenade the birds." 

" Sister " — I could have worshipped him for saying 
that, and so with bounding heart, I said : "I would I 
were a bird." 

Laughing, she said: "You shall be one in that 
lone sense, if't pleases you." 



Tethered Truants. 167 

And so we talked thus lightly with our tongues, 
while e'er between our words, and through our eyes, 
and mantling cheeks, deep meanings flashed. 

I'd loved Ethline since conscious earth-life had 
begun — yea, loved her in some far prenatal period, 
mayhap, and she had loved me e'en the same ; so, 
meeting thus, had only placed the seal of confirma- 
tion on our love. 

The brother, through his deep insight, quick 
understood our case, and with a gracious ingenuity 
made us to feel his sympathy. 

sjc :{: >jc ;jc %. %. •%. 

A year had spent itself upon the universe, and 
soon Ethline and I were to be wed. 

Fresh from the college halls where men are trained 
to heal the sick, I felt secure in means to mere 
material end, and yearned with glowing hope, for 
that eclipsing moment when Ethline should be my 
own in law, as well as love. 

Upon the eve which happily was to have been 
inwoven with our joyous nuptials, Ethline fell ill. 
'Twas only an ephemeral and slight malaise, the con- 
sequence of o'er-strained nerves, perhaps. 

I hurried to her side, and with fresh-graduate 
enthusiasm, administered some medicine. 

Just then, one of the ladies called me to another 
room to show me my Ethline's trousseau, and all the 
banks, and beautiful festoons, and fit designs in fresh, 
sweet flowers. And through it all there ran bright 
quips and sparkling repartee, and bursts of silvery 
laughter, I being central to these verbal missiles, 



168 Tethered Truants. 

intermixed with sympathetic glances and assurances. 
Oh, blissful hour, when all of sweetness, and of light, 
and altruistic beauty fell in glowing warmth about 
me there ! 

Some pleasantry had set us all in boisterous merri- 
ment, when suddenly the door was opened, and a 
visage, white as death, appeared — the scared, blanched 
face ol Ethline's brother. With trembling hand, he 
beckoned me. 

I flew with him to where my darling lay — my 
sweet Ethline, upon whose dampening brow, and in 
whose wondrous, fading eyes, already God had 
written: "Come." 

All dazed and stunned, I stood in quaking speech- 
lessness, till Ethline signified, she'd be alone with me. 

They all retired, and then — a flood of wordless 
love and tenderness, sweet beaming from her eyes — 
she said: "'Twas a mistake, dear Love — your first — 
oh, may it be your last! 'Tis now too late for 
remedy. Don't blame yourself — -it is as God had 
willed. Our union is postponed — that's ail. Now 
swear to me, you'll lock this secret in your bosom 
for two score of years, and I can welcome death." 

Low bending on my knees, I swore. 

To-day's the last one of those tedious, tearful 
years, and, freed thus from my sacred pledge, I give 
the world this bit of history. 

Yes, back through a mist of years and tears, I see 
my Ethline yet — a radiant, never-fading star in 
Time's recedent depths. 



Tethered Truants. 169 

CLEVES.* 

I spose they is some suckers lives, 

'At positively b'lieves 
They haint no tougher place on yerth, 

Than jes' our town of Oleves. 
I know I've seed men of that sort 

In sooburbs where, prehaps, 
They haint no s'loons to speak of, and 

No rough-an' -tumble scraps. 

Cleves hez her s'loons, an' fellers too, 

'At soaks their hides till they 
Are drunker than biled owls sometimes, 

But that is jes their way. 
She hez her churches likewise an' 

Her schools ; an' these yer boons 
Is might'-nigh paternized as well 

As any of the s'loons. 

Taint all in wearin' galluses an' socks, 

An' shirts 'at's split behind, 
An' all-wool pants, an' shiney hats, 

An' weskits 'at's silk-lined, 
An' reel linen cuffs, instid 

Of celleloid, an' collar 
'At reaches to the years, 'nen usin' talk 

'At's fitten fer a scholar ! 

Cleves may be sort 'o rough outside, 

But when you reach the core, 
You bet she's meller 'nough. They aint 

No town 'at will do more 
To he'p when they is need. Jest turn 

Her inside out long side 
Of toney towns turned outside in — 

You'll find she aint no snide. 



"The Ohio metropolis in which the author resides. 



170 Tethered Truants. 

MY FIRST LOVE. 

It all happened when I was too young to see the 
under side of practical jokes. It seems that I was 
even too tender in years to properly estimate the force 
and pungency of first love. As for that matter, it 
actually appears that there were several things I 
didn't understand yet, including certain phases of 
girl nature. 

Jennie Hampton, besides being mercilessly pretty, 
was an own cousin of mine. To these advantages 
she added extreme vivacity, and a set of dainty man- 
nerisms which would have made her resistless, even 
if she had been plain, and not my cousin. Further- 
more, she was as full of mischief as a persimmon is 
of pucker. 

John Smith (I can prove that his name was, and 
still is John Smith) was not indifferent to Jennie's 
charms. In point of fact, he loved her with an incan- 
descent vehemence that amounted to an amatory 
euroclydon. Jennie knew this, and this knowledge 
contained for her oodles of prospective fun. 

In conversations with me, she ridiculed the 
"gawky" young man named "Smith" and wondered 
how she should get even with him for having dared 
to fall in love with her. 

One day she said to me: "Will, don't you want to 
have some fun?" 

I did, of course. What normal young person 
doesn't want fun before everything else in the world? 

"Now," said she, "John doesn't know we are 



Tethered Truants. m 

cousins. Even if he did (with a glance that bounced 
my heart clean up to my epiglottis), cousins may be 
lovers." 

" Certainly, very certainly indeed," answered I in 
strange trepidation. 

"I want you to play the lover with me, and we'll 
see how deep a shade of green we can work into 
John's system." 

" Capital," said I, and I executed a couple of bars 
of the double shuffle. 

From this on, for a while, John oozed down life 
under a deepening cloud of blackness, while I careered 
heavenward on the smiles of Jennie. In this in- 
stance, playing the lover rapidly thickened into being 
the lover. Jennie knew this too, and when I had 
gotten well into the mucilaginous stage, she grace- 
fully fell away from me, and graciously warmed up 
to John. Thus she teeter-tottered us for a mortal 
year. 

One day toward the end of this happy-miserable 
year, John and I met on a country road. In a little 
set speech, richly studded with red-headed exclama- 
tion points, I informed him that he was a soft-shelled 
chump, and incontestable bloke, without recourse, 
and I intimated that there was only a thin stratum of 
human forbearance between the toe of my boot and 
his person. 

John retorted in kind, and I proceeded to chastise 
him. It appears that he himself was not wholly idle 
while I was thrashing him, for the party who sepa- 
rated us — a feat I had vainly attempted to accom- 



172 Tethered Truants. 

plish — said to me: "Yer jeclgment don't 'pear to 
ekal yer spunk — John Smith 'ud lick two of you." 

Jennie is still single, and still "having fun with 
the fellows.'" 



AS THREE-YEAR-OLD MABEL TELLS IT. 

Wen Kismus, it comes an' 'ey's snow on 'e gwoun' 
Kiskinkle, w'y he's go' to come to our town. 
An' fetch lots o' pitty sings long on his sled, 
Per chiles 'at's bin dood, an' is fas' sleep in bed. 

He'll slide down our chimley ist keen to de floor, 
An' b'ing all he's dot, an' mebbe b'ing more, 
An' I know w'at he's go' to fetch me an' our Tim, 
Cause I wited a gwea' big long letter to him. 

He'll b'ing me some ornges, 'n candies, 'na house 
Made o' sooger, 'n he'll b'ing me a gway flannen mouse, 
An' a dolly 'at opens an' shets boaf its eyes, 
An' w'enever you queezes its 'tummick, it quies. 

He'll b'ing bwuver Tim lots o' candy an'dum, 
An' sojers, 'na jump-jack, 'na sled, an' a dwum, 
An' mebbe a dun, but w'en muzzer is 'bout 
He dasn't to soot, cause t'l put his eyes out. 

Our baby's so teenty, don't want any toys, 
Ner candy, ner nuffin like gwowder-up boys — 
Feel so sorry fer it, an' ist pity it tause 
It's too ittle to know 'ey's a dood Santa Glaus. 



RHYMIC JIM JAMS. 

The wormest worm that worms 
Is the ardent angle worm, 

And the squirm'est thing that squirms 
Is the eel, when't wants to squirm. 
{To be continued.) 



Tethered Truants. 173 

MENTAL GYMNASTICS. 

Are voluntary mental gymnastics consistently pos- 
sible? It is a modern conclusion that they are. 
Accordingly we see codes written out which include 
rules governing their employment. We are directed 
to set apart periods lor uplifting mental exercise. 
During this hour, or half hour, or ten minutes, thus 
selected, we are to force the mind into a contempla- 
tion of things life-serving, elevating and beautiful. 
The body is to be made in every very fact the 
vassal of the mind. If a nerve send up a wail, ire, in 
the absoluteness of ec/o-ness, are to reply it into 
quiescence. This is done by that contempt of matter, 
and subordinate mental states, which distinguishes 
spirit from grosser forms of manifestation. A class of 
lofty ideals in ethics are to be set before consciousness, 
and these are to be assimilated by our (unconditioned ?) 
selfhoods. We must rise above the filmiest suspicion 
of bondage to matter — rise up into our actual, astral 
entitativeness. It is said that the experiences inci- 
dent to this estate are beatific beyond ordinary con- 
ception — are, in fact, spiritual banquets. 

It looks to me like these ecstatic transfigurations 
are necessarily accidental, not purposive psychic con- 
ditions; that they are not subject to personal voli- 
tion, but are possible resultants of peculiarity of trend 
in particular constitutions. Now look at it : we are . 
to force, or direct our minds, etc. Who are u weV If 
mind is distinct from selfhood (unthinkable), is it the 
weaker of the two ? Does selfhood employ the mind, 



174 Tethered Truants. 

or vice versa? Can the ego know without the mind, 
and if so, wherewith does it know? 

If autosuggestion is a fact, then we can control our 
beliefs. A fanatical preacher said to me lately: 
"You can believe as I do, if you want to do so.' 1 He 
did not seem to know that it is impossible to want to 
believe anything. We can not even want to want to 
do so. The desire is an affirmative response to appeals 
which that thing sends up to our judgment. It is 
partial or total acceptance — belief. 

The power of mind over matter is marvellous 
indeed, but its stimulus comes from without. It does 
not originate de novo. All suggestion is extrapersonal. 
The mind can not command these stimuli, for that 
would be to surpass itself. This is merely an every- 
day physio-psychological fact. If stigmatism ever 
was a fact, Ave all know what it depended upon. 
Environment was all that made it possible. The con- 
centration of the mind upon a part has always 
derived its primitive impulse, and its sustaining rein- 
forcement from something external to self. Without 
denying the possibility of a part being affected by 
mental concentration, a belief in stigmatization must 
be taken as evidence of pious ignorance. We do not 
hear of stigmatism now. 

We can not will a pain out of existence, because it 
is a part of consciousness, even as will-power itself is. 
To nullify consciousness, will would have to nullify 
itself. 

I do not believe in voluntary mental gymnastics. 
Something extraneous to self must originate that 
series of psychic experiences which leads up to trail- 



Tethered Truants. 175 

scendent episodes. A set of exalting influences, 
whether the result of advice or not, must bear an 
affinitive relationship to my fitting mood, before I can 
experience those spiritual upliftings which certain 
enthusiastic writers describe. The conditions must be 
right, and I can not control these. We can not feel 
good when Ave will, because we can not at once be, and 
not be ourselves. 



THE BAD BOY. 
(as shown op by the good boy.) 

They is a boy next door to me, 

And that there boy is Billy Brown. 

And my maw says she knows, 'at he 
Is thes the baddest boy in town ! 

Wisht he wuz purt-nigh good as me, 
Nen my maw, she couldn't say : 

" No ! he's bad as bad kin be — 

You can't go out with him to play." 

He's awful bad. I never know'd 
Before, how bad a boy kin be. 

I'm goin' to tell you how he show'd 
His badness to my maw, and me. 

'Taint more'n a week, out on the road, 
He hit me, 'es'n choked my th'oat 

An' on'y cause the stone I th'owed, 
Thes happend-like to hit his goat. 

He pulls our cat's tail, hardest kind, 
Thes ef I pull theirn's, all in fun, 

A leetle bit. An' nen he'll find 

Some sort o' 'scuse fer wot he's done. 



176 Tethered Truants. 

He put burrs on our dog, nen said 
He never! 'n ast who put that there 

Ole tar an' stuff on their dog's head — 
Zef I know'd er zef I'd care ! 

He takes "rounces," an' he won't "fen," 
Ner " knuckle down," an' wins my taw,. 

An' my white ally ; 'n alius nen, 

Jthes "snatch up," an' run to maw. 

Won't never lend his gum to me, 
Cause maw don't never bleve in it, 

An' he's afeared my maw might see, 
An' nen git up, an' make him git. 

Some times 'fore now. he's pickt a fight 
With other boys 'at's biggern him ; 

But /don't, cause that there ain't right — 
Gim me the boy 'at's short an' slim. 

Won't hardly never say his prayers — 
Maw makes me. Nen he alius, when 

He stumps his toe, thes purt-nigh swears ! 
Maw says he'll come to some bad en'. 



RHYMIC JIM-JAMS. 

The "flyest" fly that flies 
Is the everyday house fly. 

He'll tease you to death if he tries, 
And he's always willing to try. 

The fleetest flea that fleas 
Is the busy barn-yard flea, 

And the bee-est bee that bees 
Is the hustling honey bee. 

The chiggest chigger that chigs 
Is the chigger you never find, 

And the diggest digger that digs 
Is the pig when he has a mind. 
(To be continued.) 



Tethered Truants. 177 

RELIGION AND MEDICINE. 

Three all-involving institutions of belief and fact 
control the world. They always have done it and 
certainly always will do it. These are religion, pol- 
itics and medicine. Only religion and medicine will 
be considered here. It is my purpose to compare the 
two with a view of drawing very hopeful and cheer- 
ing conclusions from such review. 

Religion is founded upon hopeful conjecture, justi- 
fied by an innate question which can find an answer 
in the fact of immortality alone. Whether this 
question is original or was developed out of human 
pity and perpetuated by heredity, is the most solemn 
problem possibly conceivable. This heterogene fabric, 
religion, is buttressed by no axiomatic series, and 
tfleristoried by no spiritual certitudes. Physical and 
psychological phenomena furnish no doubtless evi- 
dence that theological conclusions are justified by 
any objective facts. That eternal yearning of the 
soul which is mother to all the thousands of religious 
systems that have existed, and that emotional fever 
which deliriously lifts the spirit into imagined or 
real communion with God, can not be considered at 
length here. Because all the so-called phenomena 
characterizing active piety may be purely subjective 
and are not dependent upon demonstrable immor- 
tality, they can not be accepted as logical proof in 
the impartial comparison of religion and medicine. 
Only basic facts, derived from contemplation of naked 



12 



178 Tethered Truants. 

exactitudes, may be legitimately examined in a paper, 
such as this. 

Like medicine, religion certainly came into being 
responsively to a natural want, and like medicine, it 
has grown and expanded and improved till some of 
its features now run parallel with rational deduction 
and our sense of the right. That religion is suscep- 
tible of improvement does not prove its unrealism ; it 
may simply prove that the ultimate facts of theology 
have not yet been reached, and it does prove that God 
has not at any period in the past given these mighty 
truths to the world, since it would be something 
weaker and wickeder than blasphemy to admit puny 
man's ability to improve upon them. 

For a reason which is right, because it exists and 
is not of human origin, vast accomplished facts are 
not given us in their totality. Only the hint is fur- 
nished and the end must be evolved out of a long 
succession of human achievements. That the broad- 
est quality of happiness depends upon work to a 
possibly assured end, and that this expands the indi- 
vidual's functions and ultimates in massive progress, 
diminishes the inscrutability of natural methods, and 
hints strongly of an original superior intelligence. 
That up through this vast ladder whose rungs are 
epochs in progress, there is interwoven, like a thread 
of golden light, a beneficent trend, is nearly an assu- 
rance that back of it all is merciful intent under 
direction of questionless wisdom. This reasoning is 
not answerable to doctrinal devotion, but is in severe 
relations to logical exaction, and scientific pre- 
cisiveness. 



Tethered Truants. 179 

Medicine started in some remote barbaric era in 
answer to a human want. It grew with the growth 
of civilization, jnst as religion has done. Neither 
was based upon doubtless and fixed truths, but were 
systems of guess-work and haphazardism under the 
discipline of superstition. Through all the dark 
tedious years linking the then to within a double 
decade of the now, there was no specific therapeutics; 
there was no true balm in Gilead. Why did men 
tirelessly, unremittingly try on? The answer includes 
the most awful and pregnant fact within the scope of 
human thought. They tried on obediently to a fiat 
which could not have been evolved from dumb matter, 
provided a complex nervous structure or a Deific per- 
sonality is necessary to what we term cerebration. 
Both religion and medicine have in them that quality 
of eternity which makes persistence inexhaustible 
and endless. This persistence is immediately sequen- 
tial to the operation of that conservative fact which 
we call the "first law of nature," and this is primely 
constituent in the eternal constitution of things. 
Which is the more reasonable, that a conservative 
arrangement for a perj)etuative end is the resultant of 
"a fortuitous concourse of atoms," or of purposive 
movement? 

Yery mysteriously the evental procession moves 
on. Made up of billions of mere happenings as we 
see it, it has, as a whole, a very definite trend. This 
concourse may have started with a bioplasmic mole- 
cule; it now includes countless myriads of persons 
and things with the marvels they have evolved in 



180 Tethered Truants. 

physics, and the thoughtful wonders and esthetic 
splendors with which they have adorned the sweep 
of Time. 

What factor has been chiefly instrumental in human 
progress? It is not my fault if the fine revenges of 
history dictate the answer — heresy. To sceptics out- 
side and heretics inside the church, present-day 
religion owes its freedom from those horrent features 
which made it worthy only of satanic parentage. 
These doubters are still at work, and there is plenty 
for them to do. Under the stimulus of their hetero- 
doxy, the heathen is slowly immerging into light and 
the Christian is approximating that liberal standard 
which is to make religion at last the dispenser of 
"sweetness and light," and the haven of the hunted 
and haunted wayfarer. 

Forced by heretical energy, chirurgy has slowly 
emerged from the most besotted condition of igno- 
rance into the glory of the medical present. At last, 
at last! the pregnant question on which it floated 
across all the centuries, is meeting an affirmative 
response. The beginning of the answer to medicine's 
irrepressible question has shown its grateful presence 
in at least three absolute certitudes. A vast cumula- 
tive hope has merged finally into an established 
verity — the right drug in a given condition will cure; 
the disease being curable. Medicine will uoav go on 
from triumph to triumph unto the end. 

We have seen that religion and medicine have 
trodden down the ages elbow to elbow. We have 
seen that the justification for their existence — per- 



Tethered Truants. 181 

petuative conservatism — is common. We have seen 
that the great question which is the axis cylinder of 
medicine, has met the initial portion of its answer. 
We have seen that they have moved thus far in an 
analogical relationship. Will logical consistency be 
subserved by an abandonment of this parity of reason- 
ing at this juncture? The mighty question which 
constitutes religious possibility is reaching no less 
strenuously than ever before, for its .complement — 
the answer. Its sister, medicine, has found hers. 
Shall the major and minor premises of the awful 
syllogism which nature has formulated, never meet 
the responsive conclusion upon which hangs the 
yearning hope of a world? 

However it Avill be, it will be well, because it will 
be right. Not right in some occult sense, incompre- 
hensible to mortal man, but right as we apprehend 
the right. Otherwise nature would stultify herself 
in withholding complementary response — an impos- 
sible self-violation. The very integrity of the 
universe depends upon that same self-consistency 
which guarantees a compensative feature in all facts 
which seem antagonistically related to our weal. 
Upon this largest, upon this absolutely undeniable 
fact, hangs all physical and spiritual possibility. It 
contains a guaranty, infolded in temporal life's insuf- 
ficiency as related to man's developmental possi- 
bilities, which would seem to amply justify that 
beautiful dream which comprehends an endless 
existence in which vistas of usefulness and beauty 
beckon forever to the freed soul. 



182 Tethered Truants. 

HOW STRANGELY THINGS HAPPEN. 

Just only to think of it, Kate has a beau ! 

And she, like myself, but sixteen — 
How instar I'd tell the soft noodle to go, 

But s^e's too unspeakably green. 

I saw the two children at church Sunday night, 
And she was chock full of her wiles, 

And he, like any "cute," unmustached wight, 
Was all love-glances and smiles. 

I'm clean of such silliness, thanks to good sense, 
And would give something pretty to see 

The man, whatever his sweet eloquence, 
Who could make an impression on me. 

From this time henceforth, I'm clear done with Kate. 

She can prink, and can prim, and can trim. 
As much as she likes ; and I hope that kind Fate 

Will spare me from e'er meeting him. 



How strangely things happen — near six months ago 

It now is, since Kate called on me ; 
She brought along with her that " pestilent beau," 

Whom I did not at all want to see. 

Presenting the young man she lovingly said : 

" My long absent brother," — and oh ! 
How deepest shame helped me in bowing my head 

To Katy's now quite welcome "beau." 

How noble he looked ! Oh, the mystery of it — 
What made me dream of him that night? 

What mortal shall e'er write the history of it— 
"Love dawnings" — and write it aright. 

Yes, strangely things happen, 'tis six months ago— 

How fast, oh ! how fast I have aged — 
Since Kate was at church with her unmustached beau, 

Now that beau and I are— engaged. 



Tethered Truants. 183 

DO RIGHT AND TRUST IN GOD. 

The above title comprehends my religious creed. 
Supplemented with the Golden Rule, it seems to me 
that it covers the entire moral aspect of life. What- 
ever your religious predilections, dear reader, it 
instantly commends itself to your common sense and 
your instincts of right. 

That little six-word creed with its natural corol- 
lary, the Golden Rule, is in complete and perfect har- 
mony with all that is good and beautiful in the 
universe. It might have filtered down into our souls 
directly from the Creator, so far as any religious 
deficiency in it is concerned. It embraces conserva- 
tively all that is sweet and redeeming in human 
nature and human conduct. It is full of the gentle 
beauty of humility, and is radiant with brotherly 
love, charity, faith and reverence. Written on the 
starry portal of heaven itself it would only subserve 
holy fitness, and would shine there as an essential 
emanation of divinity. 

But it won't do — unless it includes the Christian 
scheme. Your life may be as pure as starlight; may 
realize the loftiest ideals of noble manhood and 
womanhood; may be all indeed that the goodness of 
sainthood means, still if you are not so constituted 
that you can believe a particular thing, you will be 
damned. Something depends upon your method of 
life, but a thousand times more depends upon your 
belief. You must believe in the cardinal doctrines of 
Christianity, including that of trinitarianism, vicarious 



184 Tethered Truants. 

atonement, etc., before your salvation is possible, no 
matter how pure and good your life may be. There 
is no other name under heaven whereby you can be 
saved, but that of Christ. You must accept Christ or 
you are lost. The quality of your mind and heart 
may be such that you can not do this. Merely, then, 
you are doomed to an eternity of woe. It is true 
that endless agony can not do you any good, and it 
seems true that it can not do God any good, but then 
you were not able to believe, don't you see? It God 
had required you to change the color of your eyes on 
pain of eternal torment, and you had failed to do so, 
wouldn't you deserve to be damned? This is ortho-' 
doxy. Millions of good people believe in it. I can 
not understand how they do so, but shall I blame or 
ridicule them for it? 

I wish the Christian could consistently allow the 
goodness and sufficiency of my creed, but he can not. 
I know many noble people within orthodox churches 
who earnestly and deeply deplore the impossibility of 
such a concession. It is a perpetual joy to me that 
my creed covers all peoples and conditions, so that I 
can consistently take the Christian by the hand and 
call him brother. 

This creed of mine is a good one for the physician. 
It enables him to cheer the sick and reassure the 
dying. Being neither a narrow Christian nor bigoted 
Atheist, he can, without self-stultification, infuse light 
and hope into the poor, doubting, terrified, appealing 
soul that is about to take its flight. The Atheist will 
not accept this creed because it recognizes God; the 



Tethered Truants. 185 

Christian rejects it because it recognizes God too 
much. It falls within the beneficent mean that fits 
poor human nature and glorifies Jehovah. Do right, 
as you see the right, and trust in God as you understand 
God. 

WRITTEN IX EMMA'S ALBUM. 

Oh, mony a body I hae kenned — 

An' sae hae you 
Wha ca'd himsel' a faithfu' friend, 

Baith tried an' true ; 

Wha dealt in protestations Strang 

O' his devotion, 
An' vow'd that you, yoursel' cam spang 

Up to his notion ; 

But wha when you becam in need 

O' si6 a brither, 
Betook himsel' awa with speed 

To — cheat anither. 

Sic bodies, Emma, dinna trust — 

Their adulation 
Is na better than a thrust 

O' defamation. 

Their lips may whisper words o' love, 

The whunstane heart, 
Untouched the while, will never move 

To take a part. 

Oh ! Emma, let us strive to be 

Wi' all our dealing, 
Free from guile an' treachery, 

In thought an' feeling. 

Sae may our lives glide smooth an' even, 

Till death shall come, 
An' sweetly usher us in Heaven, 

Our future home. 



186 Tethered Truants. 

ENFANT TERRIBLE. 

My neighbor had a boy — alas, he has him still. 
Some ten years now have lapsed since first he 
dawned, and I will wager my own life the devil held 
a fete that luckless night. Until 'tis proved that 
deviltry in essence forms part of God's great plan, I 
can not reconcile this youth's existence with Divine 
consistency. 

A gamin pure, in all the word implies, he adds hell- 
bent refinements to the character, which no pen can 
describe. His impish versatility no limit finds, save 
in the checks of the impossible. 

He swears in natural C, and snatches up at marbles, 
and delights to rob birds' nests. And when green- 
apple time is on, or watermelon time, he forages suc- 
cessfully, and walks upon his hands in his excessive 
glee when other boys are howling with the gripes. 
He smokes "snipes" which he gathers on the pave, 
and "flings rocks" through street lamps, and talks 
outrageous slang; encourages dog fights, is ambidex- 
trous in a fisticuff, and in his accuracy, leads all the 
devil-slingists in his ward. 

He only goes to school when driven, and then 
spends all his time in bending pins at proper angle for 
his teacher's woe, and studying close the festive fly' 8 
anatomy. He will not say his prayers, and has no use 
for knives or forks at table; don't say "please" nor 
" yes, sir," nor " yes, ma'am," and doesn't know 
there's such a word as " thanks." Throws lighted 
fire-crackers in your face, and laughs consumedly at 



Tethered Truants. 187 

your discomfiture; makes pictures unrefined with 
chalk on fences, plays " tick-tack," delights in blow- 
guns, pop-guns, squirt-guns and toy pistols. Always 
overworks the patience due him from his sister's 
beau, and never goes to sunday-school or church, for 
he would rather "play for keeps" than go to heaven. 

By idiosyncrasy is he pragmatic, and he scooteth 
deviously by native bent. To skite through curves 
eccentric, he was born, and exigencies oft createth he 
which sendeth him fast shinning it down steep back- 
stairs, and through dark alleys and by-ways, cat- 
haunted, mean and serpentine. 

I own a dog, a " towsy tyke," of manners mild and 
social nose. I love that dog, and it is not too much 
to say that he reciprocates that love. One day last 
month he came into the house with most unseemly 
haste — he came via the lower sash. His tail was dis- 
located and was hairless, and a piece of string was 
hanging to it yet. Our rooster's life came to a tragic 
terminus last week — that boy bad "sicked" his game 
cock onto ours. Our best canary bird has lost an eye — 
unerring devil-sling. Diplopia is w r hat ails our cat — 
tobacco juice. Pruritis drives our pet goat wild — 
'twas terebinthina. And so, dear reader, so on end- 
lessly. 

If it was meant that we should love our neighbors 
as ourselves, I waive that Scripture, for 'tis plain fate 
hath declared for me a damned emergency, and there- 
fore, it is nothing that I sit up late o' nights to hate 
that boy. 

Two days ago he got into a squabble with a bull, 
and Taurus disemboweled him. And when I heard 



188 Tethered Truants. 

of it I fell into eclamsic ecstasy, and came near dying 
of o'erwhelming thankfulness. 

He told his pap the wound was hurting some, and 
so the foolish man came after me to treat his son. I 
fed th' infernal kid on alcoholics strong, and poured 
down spices hot as h -heaven knows what, and several 
times injected fuming nitric acid in his peritoneal 
sac, but he got well within three days, and now 
seems spryer and more diabolicker than e'er before. 

My property is now for sale, and if needs be, I'll 
sell it for a song, but don't, please don't oiler "Boom- 
Ta-Ra," for he sings that with fell Mephistophelian 
pertinacity. 

My home disposed of, I shall creep into the bow'ls 
of Shakerdom, where boys are never born, and there 
ooze through the balance of my blasted life. 



RHYMIC JIM-JAMS. 

The hoggest hog that hogs 

Is the hoggiest, hoggishest hog, 

And the doggest dog that dogs 
Is the inevitable " yaller dog." 

The duckest duck that ducks 
Is the flattest footed duck, 

And the cluckest thing that clucks 
Is a hen when on the cluck. 

The goosest goose that gooses 
Is the old white gander goose, 

And the moosest moose that mooses 
Is the very most moosish moose. 

(To be concluded.) 



Tethered Truants. 189 



OUR HAPPY FAMILY. 

Our baby has a kitty, 

Which is very cute and pretty, 
And full of all a kitty's frolic ways ; 

And nothing could be sweeter, 

Or be neater or completer, 
Than the way our baby crows when kitty plays. 

And Lolly has a dolly, 

And she calls her dolly " Polly," 

And she tosses it and bosses it all day — 
She dresses and caresses it, 
And mother-like, she "blesses" it, 

And only quits when tired out with play. 

And Johnny has a pony, 

And he named his pony "Koany," 

And there never, never was a greater pet ; 
And such is Johnny's pride of it, 
He's half the time astride of it — 

A happier boy and pony never met. 

And Bridget has a " cousin " 

Who is "worruth a half a dozen 
Av anny ither wan (she) iver had," 

For such is his devotion 

He said he had a notion 
" To ax her wud she marry (him) bedad ! " 

And what is there of treasure, 

And what is there of pleasure 
For " papa," and for me this pretty while? 

Oh ! we're happy as the birds are 

Whose twitterings the words are : 
" We're drinking of God's sweet eternal smile ! 



190 Tethered Truants. 

SUBJECTIVITY. 

Before publishing my editorial on "Mental Gym- 
nastics," which appeared in the April Gleaner, I read 
it as a paper before the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical 
Society. Much discussion followed in which it was 
developed that only one or two ot all the doctors 
present had correctly apprehended its essential 
import. The radicles of its basis originate in a layer 
of sublogic not often worked by the busy practitioner, 
so that it was natural that it should have been mis- 
understood. The nub of the whole argument depends 
upon a recognition of that psychic impossibility, 
which is paralleled in the physical difficulty one 
would experience in attempting to lift himself up by 
his boot straps. 

The discussion finally veered into sciolistic glimp- 
sings at that subjective philosophy which is the 
outcome of exasperated idealism. The doctrine is 
almost as old as time, its original and native habitat 
being in India. The oriental mystics, those strange 
recluses who introspect themselves into adeptship, 
know, according to Hensoldt and other Orientalists, 
that matter is unreal, being merely a mental 
phenomenon. 

Their conclusions may be said to be elementarily 
illustrated in the position that there could be no 
sound if there were not ears to hear. In this case, 
however, the phenomenon depends upon a complexity 
of conditions which furnishes a footing for counter 
argument, which is hardly the case with reference to 
their stock mode of reasoning. There could be no 



Tethered Truants. 191 

sound, for that is merely the name of an effect in the 
sensorium. The auditory apparatus is one of the 
elements of sound, vibration being the other. low, 
the question remains, would there be vibration if there 
were no ears ? The Eastern esoterics say there would 
not. Vibration is the cause, hearing, the effect. Cause 
and effect are interdependent. Destroy an effect and 
you abolish the related cause. You could no longer 
call it a cause, for it would no longer be such. Cause? 
Cause of what? Your cause has disappeared with 
your effect. 

"But," you will argue, "the physical condition 
which Ave called a cause, still exists — we have only 
lost a term.' 1 

Not so, say the pundits; the cause included the 
condition, and you admit the cause is gone. Where 
then is your condition? These philosophers deny, 
in toto, the possibility of objectivity. All things 
exist in mind alone, and matter is an illusion. 

If we are capable of self-contemplation, then self 
becomes an object, and by their standard, is anni- 
hilated; so that their logic, pushed to its ultimate, 
establishes our very own nonexistence. This was the 
conclusion of idealism, but the Indian philosophers 
knew better; they knew that self-contemplation is 
impossible, for the same reason that auto-suggestion 
is impossible. Self would have to exceed itself to 
examine itself. This is auto-annulling stultification, 
and is a capital absurdity. 

" Matter is an illusion; mind alone is real" This is 
the conclusion of Hindoo philosophy. It is probably 
undeniable that, as related to occultism and the riddle 



192 Tethered Truants. 

of existence, the Hindoo philosophers are the greatest 
on earth. The doctrine threads those marvelous 
collations of intellectual subtleties and moral precepts, 
the vedas and Upanishads, and gives direction to the 
mental trend and temporal policies of that wonderful 
people, the Hindoos, to whom we send missionaries! 

We send missionaries to them because their religion 
is heterodox, being both theosophic and pantheistic. 
Ah! well, if Christianity is a gentler and sweeter 
religion than Buddhism, it is right to send mission- 
aries, whatever may be either their or our philosophy. 



WHO MAY PRAY. 

Can a lawyer, or doctor, or undertaker consistently 
pray for his daily bread? In thus praying, the law- 
yer asks for a continuance of strife and crime; the 
doctor, for continued sickness and suffering, and the 
undertaker, for an unbroken succession of deaths. 
It inevitably reduces to this, for things which are 
equal to the same thing are equal to each other. 

But crime, sickness and death are eternal and benef- 
icent facts. Beneficent, because without them there 
could exist no opportunities to do good in the world. 
Virtue feeds on vice. The useful class of men re- 
ferred to, do right in praying for a perpetuation of 
God's moral economy. It is a divine fact that in 
praying for a continuance of the present order, these 
men are praying for an unending series of oppor- 
tunities to help their fellow man. The fact is, it is 
philosophically and religiously competent for any one 
to pray. 



Tethered Truants. 193 



TO JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 

Dear Jim, if I may speak to you — 

There, sparkling in the distant blue 

Of Fame's high heaven — I'd like to ask 

How sweet a thing it is to bask 

Perennially in glory ? Oh, 

"Our Jamesy" of the Long-ago 

Can you still sympathize with me, 

A mote in an eternity 

Of millions ? But I know you can : 

The lion ruleth not the man, 

For still, like spears of astral glints 

In radiant space, we see 
A generous soul's unconscious hints, 

In all your minstrelsy. 
You may not tell me just how rare 
The atmosphere is where you fare, 
And really, Jamesy, I don't care — 
Glad as I am that you're up there — 
For, long as I can surely know 

That you are still my friend — 
The Riley of the Long-ago — 

And will be to the end, 
It is enough, old friend of mine, 
And here's my hand for auld lang syne. 



13 



194 Tethered Truants. 

SPARKING. 

What's pleasanter on a Sunday night, 
When seated by a fire's light, 
And everything is looking bright, 

Than sparking? 

Or, if you'd rather walk than sit, 
And heaven has all her candles lit, 
What's nicer than to walk a bit, 

When sparking? 

Or, if one's beau has trotting stock, 
And one would rather ride than walk 
What's better than a riding talk, 

While sparking ? 

Or, if the ground is white with snow, 

What then is gayer than to go 

In sleigh and furs beside your beau 

A sparking? 

Or, if the sleighs and buggies fail, 
And there's a lake about, and gale, 
What's gloriouser than just a sail. 

When sparking? 

Indeed I care not what may be 
The bearing circumstantially — 
There's nought yields such felicity 

As sparking. 

I know old bachelors will say 
That courting seriously don't pay — 
They think it's throwing time away, 

This sparking. 

Old maids — I say it blushingly — 

Will incontestably agree 

That 'tis the height of vanity — 

This sparking. 

But let them all say what they will, 
I'm of the same opinion still, 
And will be till I get my fill 

Of sparking. 



Tethered Truants. 195 

TAKE HOPE, BROTHER. 

Out of the dark cloud of doubt, and superstition, 
and bitter dogmatism, which has overhung the relig- 
ious world across all the ages ot the past, light is 
breaking. The chaos of opinion — the lurid phantas- 
magoria of orthodoxies and hetrodoxies, and heresies 
and dissensions and creedic bigotries, are melting 
into a common, rational and humane trend of 
thought and belief. The pulpit savageries which, 
within four or five decades, were wont to shake the 
chattering sinner over a brimstone hell till he pro- 
testively u took up the cross," are now almost no 
more. Instead of being a horrent and repellent 
system, back-grounded with the vengeance of a defied 
and thwarted Deity, religion generally, now wears a 
hopeful, beckoning aspect. Its expounders are not 
the crushed, self-contemning, joy-blighting pietists of 
a few years ago, whose very smiles were but another 
form of sighs, and whose professional vocalization 
was wholly funereal; instead, they are the thoughtful, 
tolerant, hopeful, happy dispensers of the gentle gos- 
pel of " Peace, good will to men. 

Take Heart, Brother.— Out of the feral of a tedious, 
medical night, through which the crudest therapeutic 
vagaries and superstitions were made damnably 
effective by force of a despotic mode of thought, a 
gentle therapeutic train of certainties under broad 
and humane tolerance, is being evolved. If the char- 
acter of the minister has changed, no less so has that 
of the physician. Instead of the coarse thinker, 
coarse drugger, miserable book-dependent and ethical 



196 lathered Truants. 

slave of the dark past, we have the live, progressive, 
enlightened, liberal, forbearing, medical ministrant, 
who does not ask to be coddled by the state, and 
whose code of ethics is the Golden Rule. The awful 
riddle of existence is untangling, and we are merging 
into premillenial light — into that blessed era ot 
fraternal reciprocity, and co-operative philanthropy, 
toward which the world has been Avorking since God 
thought it into being. Take hope; take heart, 
brother ! 



COMPOUND CASE COMPLEXLY TREATED.* 

Professor Lloyd has been rubbing me up in chem- 
istry a little lately — the New Chemistry. Although 
I claim to be polyverbiverous, I confess that the 
verbitudinosities which he reeled oil with such von 
chalant abandon staggered me a little at first. How- 
ever, I soon got onto them, so that now it is painful 
to me to have to hear the merely quintuple-join ted 
words of old-time doctors and chemists. 

Two weeks ago I was summoned to the bedside of 
Djoahnne Sdtleometzhler. The involute and lab- 
ryinthinate tangle of his symptoms made me suspect 
at first that he had absorbed his own name. But 
further examination convinced me that he was the 
victim of typhomalariopneumophthisicotrychinoteta- 
noataxiouephriticosplenitis. Owing to the ubiquity 
of pathogenic bacilli, antiseptics are always indicated, 
so I exhibited calcium betanaphtholalphamonosulpho- 



*The above has been copied all over the world. The explanation of this 
lies in the fact of its extreme modesty and simplicity. 



Tethered Truants. 197 

nate. As the patient suffered from a severe non- 
localized pain, I gave orthooxyethylana-monoben- 
zoylamidoquinoline, combined with salicylaldehydme- 
thylphenylhydrazine. For his insomnia I gave tri- 
chloraldehydphenyldimethylpyrazolene. 

His wife asked me what ailed him, and what I was 
giving him. I told her, and she said "yes," and 
turned very pale. 

Upon examining him the next evening, I became 
convinced that the vital forces had misconstrued the 
remedies, and that a congeries of retroabsorptions had 
resulted. I then wrote out the following prescrip- 
tion : 

R . Tetrahydrobetanaphtholamine, 

Sodium thioparatoluidinesulphonate, 
Orthosulphamidobensoic anhidride, 
Amidoacetoparaphenetidine aa, ^i. 
M. Sig. A tablespoonful every hour. 

When the wife presented the prescription to the 
druggist he instantly dropped dead. The patient is 
up and about, but something is wrong with his 
Broca's convolution — he mutters in a multisyllabic 
lingo which is intelligible only to modern pharmacal 
chemists. I am in hiding, where the spiral melody 
of the woodbine that twineth blendeth ever with the 
sweet, low, soothing, murmurous, quadrisyllabic, 
rhythmic rune of the gentle polygonum punctatum. 



RHYMIC JIM JAMS. 

{Concluded.) 
The mulest mule that mules 

Is the highest kicking mule, 
And the foolest fool sure 'nough, 

Is the fool that wrote this stuff. 



198 Tethered Truants. 

CONSOLATION. 

If you are normal you will dread death, whatever 
your religious predilections. Not without reasons 
that seem infinitely cruel, death has been called "The 
King of Terrors." It ruthlessly extinguishes the 
warm, gracious habit of existence, and heartlessly 
breaks up all our. sweet relatiouships with the beloved 
and the beautiful. 

Our self-involvement is such that it requires a 
supreme effort to see clear around this awful question. 
The fact is, there are exactly as many reasons why 
we should be willing to die, as there are reasons why 
we should be willing to live. As an initial mitigant 
in the contemplation of this question, let us remember 
that although dissolution is certain, life is the rule — 
with reference to yourself — and death, the exception. 
Remember that death can rob you of nothing. First, 
because life is a gift, or possibly a loan, and to recall 
this is to inflict no injustice upon you — you did not 
earn, or in any way purchase life. Second, death can 
rob you of nothing because if there is a future state 
of existence, you simply pass from a lower to a higher 
form of life. The change is gainful to you unless 
the infinitude of God's mercy and goodness is not a 
truth. If annihilation is a fact, you are .cheated out 
of nothing; because, after you are dead, it will be 
absolutely and precisely the same as if you had never 
existed. In that case there was, within the purview 
of intelligence, just "a flash between two eternities," 
that is all. If the death -bed puts a period to your 



Tethered Truants. 199 

entitative existence, then it is practically true that 
you never shall have been, for the sum of — , _f and 
— = — . You were not, you are, you are not, 
reduces to eternal nonentity in the end, so that the 
idea of deprivation cannot be associated with the 
conditions. You are not wronged even if death 
ends all. 

Death is infallibly and eternally right, or it could 
not, and would not be. It is as righteous as "the 
process of the suns" and the constancy of the planets, 
for it is a part of God's infinite scheme. Rightness 
essentially and intrinsically includes our very highest 
good, for the very unshakable reason that it is 
rightness. Suffering too is good, for it is, inscrutably 
enough, an element of rightness^ 

Let us bow bravely to our various fates, conscious 
that if we had the brains and hearts of angels, we 
should fall infinitely short in an attempt to improve 
existing conditions. However it will be with us, it 
will be inconceivably better than we could have 
planned it for ourselves. This is just as true as it is 
true that with a million times more intelligence than 
we have, we could not give helpful suggestions to 
the Creator. 





S£S< 




•mm 



MMP* 







